"Then you would not willingly abandon the recluse?"
"Indeed," she said with a quivering in her voice, "I cannot endure the notion. You have been so kind and good to me, sir, and I do so enjoy coming to you. And you would be all alone again with Jumbo! Oh sir, could you not drive down if all the coach windows were close shut up? You would have my papa to talk to!"
"And what would your papa say to having a miserable old hermit inflicted on him?"
"He would be only too glad."
"No, no, my gentle friend, there are other reasons. I could not make my abode in Lady Belamour's house, while in that of my nephew, my natural home, I have a right to drag out what remains of the existence of mine. Nay, are you weeping, my sweet child? That must not be; your young life must take no darkness from mine. Even should Lady Belamour's arbitrary caprice bear you off without another meeting, remember that you have given me many more happy hours than I ever supposed to be in store for me, and have opened doors which shall not be closed again."
"You will get some one to recite to you?" entreated Aurelia, her voice most unsteady.
"Godfrey shall seek out some poor scholar or exhausted poetaster, with a proviso that he never inflicts his own pieces on me," said Mr. Belamour, in a tone more as if he wished to console her than as it were a pleasing prospect. "Never fear, gentle monitress, I will not sink into the stagnation from which your voice awoke me. Neither Godfrey nor my nephew would allow it. Come, let us put it from our minds. It has always been my experience, that whatever I expected from my much admired sister-in-law, that was the exact reverse of what she actually did. Therefore let us attend to topics, though I wager that you have no fresh acquisitions for me to-day."
"I am ashamed, sir, but I could not fix my mind even to a most frightful description of wolves in Mr. Thomson's 'Winter.'"
"That were scarcely a soothing subject; but we might find calm in something less agitating and more familiar. Perhaps you can recall something too firmly imprinted on your memory to be disturbed by these emotions."
Aurelia bethought herself that she must not disappoint her friend on what might prove their last evening; she began very unsteadily:-"' Hence, loathed Melancholy.'"