onversation,
and felt for it just so much tolerance, so much compassion, you may
say, as to be able to brave Mabel's quizzing looks from across the
room. Mabel always had a gibe for Francis Lingen. She called him the
Ewe Lamb, and that kind of thing. It was plain that she scorned him.
Lucy, on the other hand, pitied him without knowing it, which was even
more desperate for the young man. It had never entered Lingen's head,
however, that anybody could pity him. True, he was poor; but then he
was very expensive. He liked good things; he liked them choice. And
they must have distinction; above all, they must be rare. He had some
things which were unique: a chair in ivory and bronze, one of a set
made for Mme. de Lamballe, and two of Horace Walpole's snuff-boxes. He
had a private printing-press, and did his own poems, on vellum. He had
turned off a poem to Lucy while she was inspecting the _appareil_
once. "To L. M. from the Fount." "Sonnets while you wait," said Mabel,
curving her upper lip; but there was nothing in it, because many
ladies had received the same tribute. He had borrowed that too from
Horace Walpole, and only wanted notice. Now you don't pity a man who
can do these things, even if he has got no money; and for what else
but want of money could you pity a man of taste?

I believe myself that both Mabel and Lucy overrated Francis Lingen's
attentions. I don't think that they amounted to much more than
providing himself with a sounding-board, and occasional looking-glass.
He loved to talk, and to know himself listened to; he loved to look
and to know himself looked at. You learned a lot about yourself that
way. You saw how your things were taken. A poet--for he called himself
poet, and had once so described himself in a hotel visitors' book--a
poet can only practise his art by exerting it, and only learn its
effect by studying his hearers. He preferred ladies for audience, and
one lady at a time: there were obvious reasons for that. Men never
like other men's poetry. Wordsworth, we know, avowedly read but his
own.

But Mabel, and Lucy too, read all sorts of implications. His lowered
tones, his frequency, his persistence--"My dear, he caresses you with
his eyes. You know he does," Mabel used to say. Lucy wondered whether
he really did, and ended by supposing it.

Just now, therefore, Francis Lingen flowed murmuring on his way, like
a purling brook, rippling, fluctuant, carrying insignificant straws,
insects of