Edward Lorraine.—"Have you read the tale I have just finished, Di Vasari?"
Lady Mandeville.—"Oh, we can enter into your enjoyment. Emily and I read it about a week ago;—read it during one half the day, and talked of it during the other."
Edward Lorraine.—"The story itself is one of intense interest—one of passion and poetry. But even this has less attraction for me than the strong peculiarities of the man's spirit. I knew him, and can so well imagine the strength and bitterness of his mind when some of the passages were written."
Emily.—"You say you knew the author. What was he like?"
Edward Lorraine.—"That is to say, was he handsome? Yes, in a peculiar and un-English style. He had high, sharp, and somewhat Jewish features, dark eye, clear, keen, and penetrating, with something almost ferocious in their expression:
'And in his eye the gladiator spoke.'
If I believed in transmigration, I should have said that in his former stage of existence he had been a Bengal tiger; and somewhat of its likeness still lingered in his face."
