ifice every now and then; for instance, I will ask you to punish
yourself by an occasional tete-a-tete with an ancient gentleman; and, as
we can also by the same reasoning pardon great faults in each other, if
they are not often committed, so I will forgive you, with all my heart,
whenever you refuse my invitations, if you do not refuse them often. And
now farewell till we meet again."

It seemed singular and almost unnatural to Linden that a man like
Talbot, of birth, fortune, and great fastidiousness of taste and temper,
should have formed any sort of acquaintance, however slight and distant,
with the facetious stock-jobber and his wife; but the fact is easily
explained by a reference to the vanity which we shall see hereafter
made the ruling passion of Talbot's nature. This vanity, which
branching forth into a thousand eccentricities, displayed itself in the
singularity of his dress, the studied yet graceful warmth of his
manner, his attention to the minutiae of life, his desire, craving and
insatiate, to receive from every one, however insignificant, his obolus
of admiration,--this vanity, once flattered by the obsequious homage it
obtained from the wonder and reverence of the Copperases, reconciled his
taste to the disgust it so frequently and necessarily conceived; and,
having in great measure resigned his former acquaintance and wholly
outlived his friends, he was contented to purchase the applause
which had become to him a necessary of life at the humble market more
immediately at his command.

There is no dilemma in which Vanity cannot find an expedient to develop
its form, no stream of circumstances in which its buoyant and light
nature will not rise to float upon the surface. And its ingenuity is as
fertile as that of the player who (his wardrobe allowing him no other
method of playing the fop) could still exhibit the prevalent passion for
distinction by wearing stockings of different colours.

CHAPTER XIII.

Who dares
Interpret then my life for me as 't were
One of the undistinguishable many?
COLERIDGE: Wallenstein.

The first time Clarence had observed the young artist, he had taken a
deep interest in his appearance. Pale, thin, undersized, and slightly
deformed, the sanctifying mind still shed over the humble frame a spell
more powerful than beauty. Absent in manner, melancholy in air, and
never conversing except upon subjects on which his imagination was
exci