drawn, much to his advantage, between him and the very worthy minister, in whom, nevertheless, as we have said, Mrs M'Intyre profoundly believed. She admired the tact, though it seemed profanity to call it tact, which he had shown in these delicate circumstances; and reproaching herself for her blindness hitherto, she rather ran into the opposite extreme. In short, she admired him and loved him more and more, and day by day – as a cousin; so it must be confessed that Mr Leslie's chances were looking up.
While as for him, in the true spirit of poetry, he took to idealising the maiden he had longed to adore. Before he thought seriously of loving her, he had been hampered by his distrustful good-sense. He had admired the natural grace of her movements; he had meditated sonnets to her beauties when the fancy seized him; he had liked the liveliness that sparkled in her badinage with Venables. But whether it were from a dash of jealousy or doubts as to her depth, he had feared that she and Venables would be fitly matched. For Leslie, with no touch of personal vanity, cherished a good deal of quiet intellectual pride. But with him, as with her, there had come a reaction, and now he was the more ready to worship that he had rashly criticised. Now he figured her to himself as the ministering angel, bringing messages from heaven to desolate hearth; and then, in a natural sequence of ideas, he thought what her presence would be in her husband's home. Altogether, if Mr Venables had really left his heart in the Highlands, when he went southward full of self-confidence, to study the advancement of his fortunes, he might have had good grounds for uneasiness, had he known all that was going on.
CHAPTER XI. – THE HON. WILFRED WINSTANLEY.
But, come what might of his affair with his cousin, Jack Venables had been doing well for himself. In Winstanley he seemed to have met what the spiritualists would have called his affinity, allowances being made for the difference in their ages. He had succeeded as the other hoped to succeed, by social gifts, by tact, and by enterprise. To be sure, as Jack learned by degrees, Winstanley had had certain advantages in starting. He heard the story bit by bit, and, as it were, incidentally; yet Winstanley was really frank, and willing to be so, for he loved to find an admiring listener. And Jack sat at his feet with unfeigned and flattering interest, storing up the treasures of wisdom which he hoped to turn to practical account.
Mr Winstanley had been the second son of the Viscount Wreckin; and through his mother he had inherited a handsome independent fortune. Had he been more humbly born and poor, he would probably have done what Jack had dreamed of doing, and turned artist, launching out as an adventurer in full Bohemia. He was fond of art, and had fair talents that way, which possibly he might have cultivated to profitable purpose. He was fond of pleasure too, and it might well have been a question whether art or pleasure would have got the upper hand, had he given himself over to leading the life of a Mürger. As it was, the family traditions kept
