He, and his pursuits after leaving school, are thus elegantly described:—
“When free, all healthy study was put by, that he might rush
To his favourite books, French chiefly, that his blood might boil and gush
Over scenes which set his visage glowing crimson—not a blush.”
This gentleman and Lilian’s lover strike up a strong friendship for one another, and the latter makes Winton his confidant. As yet no suspicions arise to break the blind sleep of the infatuated dreamer.
“Delights were still remaining—hate—shame—rage—I can’t tell what,
Comes to me at their memory; none that, more or less, was not
The soul’s unconscious incest, on creations self-begot.”
He still continues to doat on Lilian.
“Oh friend, if you had seen her! heard her speaking, felt her grace,
When serious looks seem’d filling with the smiles which, in a space,
Broke, sweet as Sabbath sunshine, and lit up her shady face.
“Try to conceive her image—does it make your brain reel round?
But all of this is over. Well, friend—various signs (I found
Too late on rumination) then and thenceforth did abound,
“Wherefrom—but that all lovers look too closely to see clear—
I might have gather’d matter fit for just and jealous fear.
From her face, the nameless something now began to disappear.
“What I felt for her I often told her boldly to her face;
Blushes used to blush at blushes flushing on in glowing chace!
But latterly she listen’d, bending full of bashful grace.
“It was to hide those blushes, I thought then, but I suspect
It was to hide their absence.”
How great this writer is on the subject of blushing we shall have another opportunity of showing.—(See Lady Mabel’s shoulders, in the poem of Sir Hubert.) Meanwhile, the fair deceiver is now undergoing a course of French novels, under the tuition of young Winton. The consequence was,
“Her voice grew louder”—no great harm in that—
“Her voice grew louder—losing the much meaning it once bore,
The passion in her carriage, though it every day grew more,
Was now the same to all men—and that was not so before.”
We suppose that there was now “heavy passion in her walk,” whoever the man might be that approached her.
“And grosser signs, far grosser I remember now; but these
I miss’d of course, and counted with those light anomalies,
Too frequent to disturb us into searching for their keys.”
These misgivings, which might have ripened into suspicions, are suddenly swept away by a stroke of duplicity on the part of his mistress, inconceivable in any woman except one inclined naturally, and without any prompting, to practise the profoundest artifices of vice.
“Even the dreadful glimpses now began to fade away,
And disappear’d completely, when my Lilian asked one day,
If I knew what reason Winton had to make so long a stay
“In England—‘For,’ said Lilian, with untroubled countenance,
‘Winton of course has told you of the love he left in France.’
I seized her hand, and kiss’d it—joy had left no utterance.”
Winton, according to the account of the false Lilian, having a love in France, could not, of course be supposed to be paying court to her. Thus the lover is thrown off the scent, and his doubts are entirely laid asleep. He is again in the seventh heavens of assured love, and continues thus:—
