“I AM glad to see you once more in the world,” said Lady Glenalvon; “and I trust that you are now prepared to take that part in it which ought to be no mean one if you do justice to your talents and your nature.”

KENELM.—“When you go to the theatre, and see one of the pieces which appear now to be the fashion, which would you rather be,—an actor or a looker-on?”

LADY GLENALVON.—“My dear young friend, your question saddens me.” (After a pause.)—“But though I used a stage metaphor when I expressed my hope that you would take no mean part in the world, the world is not really a theatre. Life admits of no lookers-on. Speak to me frankly, as you used to do. Your face retains its old melancholy expression. Are you not happy?”

KENELM.—“Happy, as mortals go, I ought to be. I do not think I am unhappy. If my temper be melancholic, melancholy has a happiness of its own. Milton shows that there are as many charms in life to be found on the Penseroso side of it as there are on the Allegro.”

LADY GLENALVON.—“Kenelm, you saved the life of my poor son, and when, later, he was taken from me, I felt as if he had commended you to my care. When at the age of sixteen, with a boy’s years and a man’s heart, you came to London, did I not try to be to you almost as a mother? and did you not often tell me that you could confide to me the secrets of your heart more readily than to any other?”

“You were to me,” said Kenelm, with emotion, “that most precious and sustaining good genius which a youth can find at the threshold of life,—a woman gently wise, kindly sympathizing, shaming him by the spectacle of her own purity from all grosser errors, elevating him from mean tastes and objects by the exquisite, ineffable loftiness of soul which is only found in the noblest order of womanhood. Come, I will open my heart to you still. I fear it is more wayward than ever. It still feels estranged from the companionship and pursuits natural to my age and station. However, I have been seeking to brace and harden my nature, for the practical ends of life, by travel and adventure, chiefly among rougher varieties of mankind than we meet in drawing-rooms. Now, in compliance with the duty I owe to my dear father’s wishes, I come back to these circles, which under your auspices I entered in boyhood, and which even then seemed to me so inane and artificial. Take a part in the world of these circles; such is your wish. My answer is brief. I have been doing my best to acquire a motive power, and have not succeeded. I see nothing that I care to strive for, nothing that I care to gain. The very times in which we live are to me, as to Hamlet, out of joint; and I am not born like Hamlet to set them right. Ah! if I could look on society through the spectacles with which the poor hidalgo in ‘Gil Blas’ looked on his meagre board,—spectacles by which cherries appear the size of peaches, and tomtits as large as turkeys! The imagination which is necessary to ambition is a great magnifier.”

“I have known more than one man, now very eminent, very active, who at your age felt the same estrangement from the practical pursuits of others.”

“And what reconciled those men to such pursuits?”

“That diminished sense of individual personality, that unconscious fusion of one’s own being into other existences, which belong to home and marriage.”

“I don’t object to home, but I do to marriage.”

“Depend on it there is no home for man where there is no woman.”

“Prettily said. In that case I resign the home.”

“Do you mean seriously to tell me that you never see the woman you could love enough to make her your wife, and never enter any home that you do not quit with a touch of envy at the happiness of married life?”

“Seriously, I never see such a woman; seriously, I never enter such a home.”

“Patience, then; your time will come, and I hope it is at hand. Listen to me. It was only yesterday that I felt an indescribable longing to see you again,—to know your address that I might write to you; for yesterday, when a certain young lady left my house after a week’s visit, I said this girl would make a perfect wife, and, above all, the exact wife to suit Kenelm Chillingly.”

“Kenelm Chillingly is very glad to hear that this young lady has left your house.”

“But she has not left London: she is here to-night. She only stayed with me till her father came to town, and the house he had taken for the season was vacant; those events happened yesterday.”

“Fortunate events for me: they permit me to call on you without danger.”

“Have you no curiosity to know, at least, who and what is the young lady who appears to me so well suited to you?”

“No curiosity, but a vague sensation of alarm.”

“Well, I cannot talk pleasantly with you while you are in this irritating mood, and it is time to quit the hermitage. Come, there are many persons here, with some of whom you should renew old acquaintance, and to some of whom I should like to make you known.”

“I am prepared to follow Lady Glenalvon wherever she deigns to lead me,—except to the altar with another.”