Various
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845
"Tasso.– I hoped it once, I doubt it now.
Instructive were to me his intercourse,
Useful his counsel in a thousand ways:
This man possesses all in which I fail.
And yet – though at his birth flock'd every god,
To hang his cradle with some special gift —
The graces came not there, they stood aloof:
And he whom these sweet sisters visit not,
May possess much, may in bestowing be
Most bountiful, but never will a friend,
Or loved disciple, on his bosom rest."
The tendency of this scene is to lull Tasso into the belief that he is beloved of the princess. Of course he is ardent to obey the latest injunctions he has received from her, and when Antonio next makes his appearance, he offers him immediately "his hand and heart." The secretary of state receives such a sudden offer (as it might be expected a secretary of state would do) with great coolness; he will wait till he knows whether he can return the like offer of friendship. He discourses on the excellence of moderation, and in a somewhat magisterial tone, little justified by the relative intellectual position of the speakers. Here, again, we have a true insight into the character of the man of genius. He is modest – very – till you become too overbearing; he exaggerates the superiority in practical wisdom of men who have mingled extensively with the world, and so invites a tone of dictation; and yet withal he has a sly consciousness, that this same superiority of the man of the world consists much more in a certain fortunate limitation of thought than in any peculiar extension. The wisdom of such a man has passed through the mind of the poet, with this difference, that in his mind there is much beside this wisdom, much that is higher than this wisdom; and so it does not maintain a very prominent position, but gets obscured and neglected.
"Tasso.– Thou hast good title to advise, to warn,
For sage experience, like a long-tried friend,
Stands at thy side. Yet be assured of this,
The solitary heart hears every day,
Hears every hour, a warning; cons and proves,
And puts in practice secretly that lore
Which in harsh lessons you would teach as new,
As something widely out of reach."
Yet, spurred on by the injunction of the princess, he still makes an attempt to grasp at the friendship of Antonio.
"Tasso.– Once more! here is my hand! clasp it in thine!
Nay, step not back, nor, noble sir, deny me
The happiness, the greatest of good men,
To yield me, trustful, to superior worth,
Without reserve, without a pause or halt.
"Antonio.– You come full sail upon me. Plain it is
You are accustomed to make easy conquests,
To walk broad paths, to find an open door.
Thy merit – and thy fortune – I admit,
But fear we stand asunder wide apart.
"Tasso.– In years and in tried worth I still am wanting;
In zeal and will, I yield to none.
"Antonio. The will
Draws the deed after by no magic charm,
And zeal grows weary where the way is long:
Who reach the goal, they only wear the crown.
And yet, crowns are there, or say garlands rather,
Of many sorts, some gather'd as we go,
Pluck'd as we sing and saunter.
"Tasso. But a gift
Freely bestow'd on this mind, and to that
As utterly denied – this not each man,
Stretching his hand, can gather if he will.
"Antonio.– Ascribe the gift to fortune – it is well.
The fortunate, with reason good, extol
The goddess Fortune – give her titles high —
Call her Minerva – call her what they will —
Take her blind gifts for just reward, and wear
Her wind-blown favour as a badge of merit.
"Tasso.– No need to speak more plainly. 'Tis enough.
I see into thy soul – I know thee now,
And all thy life I know. Oh, that the princess
Had sounded thee as I! But never waste
Thy shafts of malice of the eye and tongue
Against this laurel-wreath that crowns my brow,
The imperishable garland. 'Tis in vain.
First be so great as not to envy it,
Then perhaps thou may'st dispute.
"Antonio. Thyself art prompt
To justify my slight esteem of thee.
The impetuous boy with violence demands
The confidence and friendship of the man.
Why, what unmannerly deportment this!
"Tasso.– Better what you unmannerly may deem,
Than what I call ignoble.
"Antonio. There remains
One hope for thee. Thou still art young enough
To be corrected by strict discipline.
"Tasso.– Not young enough to bow myself to idols
That courtiers make and worship; old enough
Defiance with defiance to encounter.
"Antonio.– Ay, where the tinkling lute and tinkling speech
Decide the combat, Tasso is a hero.
"Tasso.– I were to blame to boast a sword unknown
As yet to war, but I can trust to it.
"Antonio.– Trust rather to indulgence."
We are in the high way, it is plain, to a duel. Tasso insists upon an appeal to the sword. The secretary of state contents himself with objecting the privilege or sanctity of the place, they being within the precincts of the royal residence. At the height of this debate, Alphonso enters. Here, again, the minister has a most palpable advantage over the poet. He insists upon the one point of view in which he has the clear right, and will not diverge from it; Tasso has challenged him, has done his utmost to provoke a duel within the walls of the palace; and is, therefore, amenable to the law. The Duke can do no other than decide against the poet, whom he dismisses to his apartment with the injunction that he is there to consider himself, for the present, a prisoner.
In the three subsequent acts, there is still less of action; and we may as well relate at once what there remains of plot to be told, and then proceed with our extracts. Through the mediation of the princess and her friend, this quarrel is in part adjusted, and Tasso is released from imprisonment. But his spirit is wounded, and he determines to quit the court of Ferrara. He obtains permission to travel to Rome. At this juncture he meets with the princess. His impression has been that she also is alienated from him; her conversation removes and quite reverses this impression; in a moment of ungovernable tenderness he is about to embrace her; she repulses him and retires. The duke, who makes his appearance just at this moment, and who has been a witness to the conclusion of this interview, orders Tasso into confinement, expressing at the same time his conviction that the poet has lost his senses. He is given into the charge of Antonio, and thus ends the drama.
Glancing back over the three last acts, whose action we have summed up so briefly, we might select many beautiful passages for translation; we content ourselves with the following.
The princess and Leonora Sanvitale are conversing. There has been question of the departure of Tasso.
"Princess.– Each day was then itself a little life;
No care was clamorous, and the future slept.
Me and my happy bark the flowing stream,
Without an oar, drew with light ripple down.
Now – in the turmoil of the present hour,
The future wakes, and fills the startled ear
With whisper'd terrors.
"Leonora. But the future brings
New joys, new friendships.
"Princess. Let me keep the old.
Change may amuse, it scarce can profit us.
I never thrust, with youthful eagerness,
A curious hand into the shaken urn
Of life's great lottery, with hope to find
Some object for a restless, untried heart.
I honour'd him, and therefore have I loved;
It was necessity to love the man
With whom my being grew into a life
Such as I had not known, or dream'd before.
At first, I laid injunctions on myself
To keep aloof; I yielded, yielded still,
Still nearer drew – enticed how pleasantly
To be how hardly punish'd!
"Leonora. If a friend
Fail with her weak consolatory speech,
Let the still powers of this beautiful world,
With silent healing, renovate thy spirit.
"Princess.– The world is beautiful! In its wide circuit,
How much of good is stirring here and there!
Alas! that it should ever seem removed
Just one step off! Throughout the whole of life
Step after step, it leads our sick desire
E'en to the grave. So rarely do men find
What yet seem'd destined them – so rarely hold
What once the hand had fortunately clasp'd;
What has been giv'n us, rends itself away,
And what we clutch'd, we let it loose again;
There is a happiness – we know it not,
We know it – and we know not how to prize."
Tasso says, when he thought himself happy in the love of Leonora d'Este —
"I have often dream'd of this great happiness —
'Tis here! – and oh, how far beyond the dream!
A blind man, let him reason upon light,
And on the charm of colour, how he will,
If once the new-born day reveal itself,
It is a new-born sense."
And again on this same felicity,
"Not on the wide sands of the rushing ocean,
'Tis in the quiet shell, shut up, conceal'd,
We find the pearl."
It is in another strain that the poet speaks when Leonora Sanvitale attempts to persuade him that Antonio entertains in reality no hostility towards him. In what follows, we see the anger and hatred of a meditative man. It is a hatred which supports and exhausts itself in reasoning; which we might predict would never go forth into any act of enmity. It is a mere sentiment, or rather the mere conception of a sentiment. For the poet rather thinks of hatred than positively hates.
"And if I err, I err resolvedly.
I think of him as of my bitter foe;
To think him less than this would now distract,
Discomfort me. It were a sort of folly
To be with all men reasonable; 'twere
The abandonment of all distinctive self.
Are all mankind to us so reasonable?
No, no! Man in his narrow being needs
Both feelings, love, and hate. Needs he not night
As well as day? and sleep as well as waking?
No! I will hold this man for evermore
As precious object of my deepest hate,
And nothing shall disturb the joy I have
In thinking of him daily worse and worse."
Act. 4, Scene 2.
We conclude with a passage in which Tasso speaks of the irresistible passion he feels for his own art. He has sought permission of the Duke to retire to Rome, on the plea that he will there, by the assistance of learned men, better complete his great work, which he regards as still imperfect. Alphonso grants his request, but advises him rather to suspend his labour for the present, and partake, for a season, of the distractions of the world. He would be wise, he tells him, to seek the restoration of his health.
"Tasso.– It should seem so; yet have I health enow
If only I can labour, and this labour
Again bestows the only health I know.
It is not well with me, as thou hast seen,
In this luxuriant peace. In rest I find
Rest least of all. I was not framed,
My spirit was not destined to be borne
On the soft element of flowing days,
And so in Time's great ocean lose itself
Uncheck'd, unbroken.
"Alphonso.– All feelings, and all impulses, my Tasso,
Drive thee for ever back into thyself.
There lies about us many an abyss
Which Fate has dug; the deepest yet of all
Is here, in our own heart, and very strong
Is the temptation to plunge headlong in.
I pray thee snatch thyself away in time.
Divorce thee, for a season, from thyself.
The man will gain whate'er the poet lose.
"Tasso.– One impulse all in vein I should resist,
Which day and night within my bosom stirs.
Life is not life if I must cease to think,
Or, thinking, cease to poetize.
Forbid the silk-worm any more to spin,
Because its own life lies upon the thread.
Still it uncoils the precious golden web,
And ceases not till, dying, it has closed
Its own tomb o'er it. May the good God grant
We, one day, share the fate of that same worm! —
That we, too, in some valley bright with heaven,
Surprised with sudden joy, may spread our wing.
I feel – I feel it well – this highest art
Which should have fed the mind, which to the strong
Adds strength and ever new vitality, —
It is destroying me, it hunts me forth,
Where'er I rove, an exile amongst men."
Act V. Scene 2.
DAVID THE "TELYNWR;" 20 OR, THE DAUGHTER'S TRIAL
A TALE OF WALES
BY JOSEPH DOWNES
The inhabitants of the white mountain village of K – , in Cardiganshire, were all retired to rest, it being ten o'clock. No – a single light twinkled from under eaves of thick and mossy thatch, in one cottage apart, and neater than the rest, that skirted the steep street, (as the salmon fishers, its chief inhabitants, were pleased to call it,) being, indeed, the rock, thinly covered with the soil, and fringed with long grass, but rudely smoothed, where very rugged, by art, for the transit of a gamboo (cart with small wheels of entire wood) or sledge. The moonlight slept in unbroken lustre on the houses of one story, or without any but what the roof slope formed, and several appearances marked it as a fisher village. A black, oval, pitched basket, as it appeared, hung against the wall of several of the cottages, being the coracle, or boat for one person, much used on the larger Welsh rivers, very primitive in form and construction, being precisely described by Cæsar in his account of the ancient Britons. Dried salmon and other fish also adorned others, pleasingly hinting of the general honesty and mutual confidence of the humble natives, poor as they were, for strangers were never thought of; the road, such as it was, merely mounting up to "the hill" (the lofty desert of sheepwalk) on one hand, and descending steeply to the river Tivy on the other. A deadened thunder, rising from some fall and brawling shallow "rapid" of the river, was the only sound, except the hooting of an owl from some old ivied building, a ruin apparently, visible on the olive-hued precipice behind. The russet mass of mountain, bulging, as it were, over the little range of cots, gave an air of security to their picturesque white beauty; while silver clouds curled and rolled in masses, grandly veiling their higher peaks, and sometimes canopied the roofs, many reddened with wall-flower; the walls also exhibiting streaks of green, where rains had drenched the vegetating thatch and washed down its tint of yellow green. Aged trees, green even to the trunks, luxuriant ivy enveloping them as well as the branches, stretched their huge arms down the declivity leading to the Tivy, the flashing of whose waters, through its rich fringe of underwood, caught the eye of any one standing on the ridge above. A solitary figure, tall and muffled, did stand with his back in contact with one of these oaks, so as to be hardly distinguishable from the trunk.
A poet might imagine, looking at a Welsh village by moonlight, thus embosomed in pastoral mountains, canopied with those silver mists whose very motion was peace, and lulled by those soft solemn sounds, more peace-breathing than even silence, that there, at least, care never came; there peace, "if to be found in the world," would be surely found; and soon that one light moving – that prettier painted door stealthily opening – would prove that peace confined to the elements only. "Here I am!" would be groaned to his mind's ear by the ubiquitous, foul fiend, Care; for thence emerged a female form —simplex munditiis– the exact description of it as to attire – rather tall than otherwise, but its chief characteristic, a drooping kind of bowed gait, in affecting unison with a melancholy settled over the pale features, so strongly as to be visible even by the moon at a very short distance. Brushing away a tear from each eye, as she held to her breast a little packet of some kind, as soon as she found (as she imagined) the coast clear, she proceeded, after fastening her door, toward one of the bowered footpaths leading to the river. The concealed man looked after her, prepared to follow, when some belated salmon fisher, his dark coracle, strapped to his back, nodding over his head, appeared. This lurking personage was nicknamed "Lewis the Spy" by the country people. He was the agent, newly appointed, to inspect the condition of a once fine but most neglected estate, which had recently come into possession of a "Nabob," as they called him – a gentleman who had left Wales a boy, and was now on his voyage home to take possession of a dilapidated mansion called Talylynn. Lewis, his forerunner and plenipotentiary, was the dread and hate of the alarmed tenants. He had already ejected from his stewardship a good but rather indolent old man, John Bevan, who had grown old in the service of the former "squire;" and besides kept watch over the doings on the farms in an occult and treacherous manner, prowling round their "folds" by dusk, and often listening to conversations by concealing himself. Such was the man who now accosted the humble fisherman. Reverentially, as if to the terrible landlord himself, the peasant bared his head to his sullen representative.
"Who is that young woman?" he enquired, sternly, though well knowing who she was.
"Dim Saesneg," answered the man, bowing.
"None of your Dim Saesneg to me, fellow," rejoined Lewis, sternly. "Did not I hear you swearing in good English at a Saesyn (Englishman or Saxon) yesterday?"
The Welshman begged pardon in good Saxon, and answered at last —
"Why, then, if it please your honour, her name be Winifred – her other name be Bevan —Miss Bevan, the school – her father be Mister Bevan of Llaneol, steward that was to our old squire of the great house, 'the Hall' – Talylynn Hall – where there's a fine lake. I warrant your honour has fished there. You Saesonig gentlemen do mostly do nothing but fish and shoot in our poor country; I beg pardon, but you look Saesoniadd, (Saxonlike,) I was thinking – fine lake, but the trout be not to compare" —
"Well," interrupted the other laughing, "your English tongue can wag as glib as your outlandish one. A sweetheart in the case there, isn't there? What the devil's she going down to the river for at this time of night, else?"
"Why, to be sure there be!" the man answered. "We all know that; poor thing, she had need find some comforter in all her troubles – her father so poor, and in debt to this strange foreigner, who's on the water coming home now, and has made proposals for her in marriage, so they do say; but it's like your honour knows more of that than I do – for be not you Mr Lewis, I beg pardon, Lewis Lewis, esquire?"
"And what do you know of this sweetheart of hers? Is he her first, think ye? I doubt that," rejoined Lewis, not noticing his enquiry —
"You may doubt what your honour pleases, but we don't – no; never man touched her hand hardly, never one her lips, before – I did have it from her mother; but as for this one she's found at last, we wish she'd a better" —
"What's the matter with him, then?"
"Oh, nothing more than that he's poor, sir – poor; and that we don't know much about the stranger" —
"What 'we' do you mean, while you talk of 'we'?"
"Lord bless ye, sir, why us all of this bankside, and this side Tivy, the great family of us, she's just like our little girl to us all; for don't she have all our young ones to give 'em learning, whether the Cardigan ladies pay for 'em or don't? And wasn't poor dear old John Bevan the man who would lend every farmer in the parish a help in money or any way, only for asking? So it is, you see, she has grown up among us. This young man, though he may be old for what I know, never seeing him in my life – you see, sir, we on this side of Tivy are like strangers to the Cardy men, t'other side —they are Cardie's, sure enow, true ones, as the Saxon foreign folk do call us all of this shire. I wouldn't trust one of 'em t'other side, no further than I could throw him. I'll tell ye a story" —
"Never mind. What about David?"
"Oh, ho! You know his name, then? Well, and that's all I do – pretty nigh. He lives with a woman who fostered him after his own mother died in travail with him, they do say, who has a little house, beyond that lump of a mountain, above all the others, we see by daylight; he has been in England, and is a strange one for music. He owes (owns, possesses,) a beautiful harp —beautiful! The Lord knows, some do say, that's all he owes in the world, so (except) his coracle and the salmon he takes, and what young people do give him at weddings and biddings, where he goes to play: and what's that to keep a wife? Poor Davy Telynwr! Yet, by my soul, we all say we'd rather see her his than this foreigner gentleman's, who has almost broke her heart, they say, by coming between her and her own dear one."
"He's not come yet," muttered the other, sullenly; adding, sharply and bitterly, "Mighty good friends you all are, to wish her married to a beggar, a vagabond harper, rather than to a gentleman."
"Why – to be sure, sir – but vows be vows – love's love – and to tell truth, sir," (the Welsh blood of the Cardy peasant was now up,) "if any foreign, half Welsh, half wild Indian, sort of gentleman had sent his fine letters, asking my sweetheart's friends to turn me off, in my courting days, and prepare my wench to be his lady, instead of my wife – I'd have – I'd have" —
"What would you have done?" asked the other, laughing heartily.
"Cursed him to St Elian!" roared the other; then, dropping his voice into a solemn tone, "put him into his well.21 I'd have plagued him, I warrant. But for my part," added the man archly, "I don't believe there's any squire lover in the case – nor that your honour ever said there is." The agent here vanished, as if in haste, abruptly, down the steep path.
During this conversation, Winifred had reached the river. While she stands expectant, not in happiness, but in tears, it is time to say a few words of the lover so expected.
David, who was lately become known "on t'other side Tivy," by the name of Nosdethiol Telynwr, that is, "night-walking harper," was an idle romantic young man, almost grown out of youth, who had long lived away from Wales, where he had neither relative nor friend but one aged woman who had been his first nurse, he having been early left an orphan. Without settled occupation or habits, he was understood almost to depend for bread on the salmon he caught, and trifling presents received. A small portable harp, of elegant workmanship, (adorned with "real silver," so ran the tale,) was the companion of his moonlight wanderings. He had a whim of serenading those who had never heard of a "serenade," but were not the less sensible of a placid pleasure at being awakened by soft music in some summer sight. The simple mountain cottagers, whose slumbers he thus broke or soothed, often attributed the sweet sounds to the kindness of some wandering member of the "Fair Family," or Tylwyth Têg, the fairies. Nor did his figure, if discovered vanishing between the trees, if some one ventured to peep out, in a light night, dispel the illusion; for it appears, that the fairy of old Welsh superstition was not of diminutive stature."22 That he was "very learned," had somewhere acquired much knowledge of books, however little of men, was reported on both sides of the river; and these few particulars were almost all that was known even to Winifred, who had so rashly given all her thoughts, all her hopes, all her heart almost, (reserving only one sacred corner for her beloved parents,) to this dangerous stranger – for stranger he was still to her in almost all outer circumstances of life. This was partly owing to the interposition of that narrow river, however trivial a line of demarcation that must appear to English people, accustomed to cross even great rivers of commerce, like the Thames, as they would step over a brook or ditch, by the frequent aid of bridges and boats. In Wales, bridges are too costly to be common. When reared, some unlucky high flood often sweeps them away. Intercourse by ferryboats and fords is liable to long interruptions. The dwellers of opposite sides frequent different markets, and belong frequently to different counties. The nature of the soil also often differs wholly. Hence it happens, that sometimes a farmer, whose eye rests continually on the little farm and fields of another, on the opposite "bank," rising from the river running at the base of his own confronting hill-side, lives on, ignorant almost of the name, quite of the character, of their tenant, to whom he could almost make himself heard by a shout – if it happens that neither ford, ferry, nor bridge, is within short distance.
"The people of t'other side," is an expression implying nearly as much strangeness, and contented ignorance of these neighbours, and no neighbours, as the same spoken by the people of Dover or Calais, of those t'other side the Channel. It was not, therefore, surprising that poor Winifred (albeit not imprudent, save in this new-sprung passion,) might have said with the poet, too truly,
"I know not, I ask not, what guilt's in that heart;
I but know that I love thee, whatever thou art."
This wild reckless sentiment (though scarcely true to love's nature, which is above all things curious about all belonging to its object) did in her case illustrate her feelings. Winifred had lately disclosed to her dear "unknown" the ruin impending over her father, the result of his mingled good-nature and indolence, he having permitted the tenants to run in arrears, and suffer dilapidations, as already said; – the long neglect, however, of the East Indian landlord being at the root of the evil, who had been as remiss in his dealings with the steward as the steward with the tenants. The first appearance of this newly appointed agent, who announced the early return of his employer to take possession of the decayed manor-house, was as sudden as ominous of the ruin of old John Bevan. The hope he held out of the "Nabob" espousing his long-remembered child, Winifred, and the consequent salvation of her father, seemed too romantic to be believed. Yet this man proved himself duly accredited by his principal, and exercised his power already with severity. The fine old house of Talylynn, a mansion rising close to a small beautiful lake skirted by an antique park with many deer, was already almost prepared for the reception of the "squire from abroad." Meanwhile – what most excited the ill-will of the tenantry – this odious persecutor of the all-beloved John Bevan had also furbished up a neat old house adjoining the park gate, as a residence for himself; while poor Bevan's farm-house of Llaneol was suffered to fall into ruinous decay – the new steward even neglecting to keep it weather-tight.
Thus decayed, and almost ruinous, it seemed more in harmony with the fortunes of the ever resigned and patient man. But his less placid dame, after losing the services of Winifred, had fallen into a peevish sort of despondency, as the father, missing her society, and its finer species of consolation, had sunk into a more placid apathy.
David had received the hint of her possible self-devotion to the coming "squire" with very little philosophy, little temper, and no allowance for the feelings of an only daughter expecting to see a white-headed, fond father, dragged from his home to a jail. He had been incensed; he had wronged her by imputations of sordid motives – of pride, of contempt for himself as a beggar; and at last broke from her in sullen resentment, after requiring her to bring all his letters, at their next interview, which was to be a farewell one. And now she was bringing every thing she had received from him, in sad obedience to this angry demand. Nor was all his wrath, his injustice, and his despair, really unacceptable to her secret heart. She would not have had him patient under even the prospective possibility of her marrying another.
But his manner at this meeting announced a change in his whole sentiments.
His very first words, (cold, yet kind, but how altered in tone!) with his constrained deportment, expressed his acquiescence in her purpose, whether pride, jealousy, or a juster estimate of her filial virtue, had induced the stern resolve.
Winifred had never known the full strength of her own passion till now! The idea of an early eternal end to their ungratified loves, which had for some time become familiar to her own secret mind, assumed a new and strange terror for her imagination the moment it ceased to be hers alone. The shock was novel and overpowering, when the separation seemed acquiesced in by him, thus putting it out of her own power to hesitate further between devotion to the lover or to the parent. His reconciled manner, his calm taking her by the hand, even the kiss which she could not resist, were more painful than his utmost resentment would have been. Yet there was a sad severity in his look, as his fine countenance of deep melancholy turned to the bright moon, which a little comforted her, and indicated that it was pride rather than patience which led to his affected contentment. He had not a parent to nerve his heart to the sacrifice.
"I passed your home yesterday," he began sarcastically: "it is a fine place again, already, that hall of Talylynn, and wants only as fine a mistress."
"You wrong me, David bach! on my life and soul you do, dear David!" she replied sobbing. "'Tis a hateful hall – a horrid hall! If it were only I, your poor lost Winifred, that was to suffer, oh! how much sooner would I be carried dead into a vault, than alive, and dressed in all the finest silks of India, into that dreadful house you twit me with! – unkind, unkind!" And almost fainting, her head sunk upon his shoulder, and his arm was required to support her.
Instantly she recovered, and stood erect. "But oh, David, there is another dreadful place, and another dear being besides you, dearest, that I think of night and day! The horrid castle jail – my dear, dear father! Oh, if this Lewis speaks truth, and if that strange boy – I only knew him as a boy, you know – who has power to ruin him, (will surely ruin him!) will indeed forgive him all he owes; will really become his son – his son-in-law, instead of his merciless creditor; oh! could I refuse my part, shocking part though it be? I should not suffer long, David – I feel I should not."
"And pray, what kind of youth —boy as you are pleased to call him – was this nabob then?" enquired her lover, apparently startled at learning the fact of her having had some previous knowledge of his powerful rival.
"A youth! a mere child, when I last saw him," she answered. "I thought you had known all about him."
"Nothing more than his name; how came you in his company?"