Isabel was all
this and infinitely more without any struggle. When he was most
fond of Mabel, most anxious to make her his wife, there had always
been present to him a feeling that she was old. Though he knew her
age to a day,--and knew her to be younger than himself, yet she was
old. Something had gone of her native bloom, something had been
scratched and chipped from the first fair surface, and this had
been repaired by varnish and veneering. Though he had loved her he
had never been altogether satisfied with her. But Isabel was as
young as Hebe. He knew nothing of her actual years, but he did
know that to have seemed younger, or to have seemed older,--to have
seemed in any way different from what she was,--would have been to
be less perfect.
CHAPTER 69
Pert Poppet
On a Sunday morning,--while Lord Silverbridge was alone in a
certain apartment in the house at Carlton Terrace which was called
his own sitting-room, the name was brought to him of a gentleman
who was anxious to see him. He had seen his father and had used
all the eloquence of which he was master,--but not quite with the
effect which he had desired.
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