"What next, I mean?" said Herbert. "Of course I know that."
"How do you know it?" said I.
"How do I know it, Handel? Why, from you."
"I never told you."
"Told me! You have never told me when you have got your hair cut, but I
have had senses to perceive it. You have always adored her, ever since
I have known you. You brought your adoration and your portmanteau here
together. Told me! Why, you have always told me all day long. When you
told me your own story, you told me plainly that you began adoring her
the first time you saw her, when you were very young indeed."
"Very well, then," said I, to whom this was a new and not unwelcome
light, "I have never left off adoring her. And she has come back, a most
beautiful and most elegant creature. And I saw her yesterday. And if I
adored her before, I now doubly adore her."
"Lucky for you then, Handel," said Herbert, "that you are picked out for
her and allotted to her. Without encroaching on forbidden ground, we
may venture to say that there can be no doubt between ourselves of
that fact. Have you any idea yet, of Estella's views on the adoration
question?"
I shook my head gloomily. "Oh! She is thousands of miles away, from me,"
said I.
"Patience, my dear Handel: time enough, time enough. But you have
something more to say?"
"I am ashamed to say it," I returned, "and yet it's no worse to say it
than to think it. You call me a lucky fellow. Of course, I am. I was a
blacksmith's boy but yesterday; I am--what shall I say I am--to-day?"
"Say a good fellow, if you want a phrase," returned Herbert, smiling,
and clapping his hand on the back of mine--"a good fellow, with
impetuosity and hesitation, boldness and diffidence, action and
dreaming, curiously mixed in him."
I stopped for a moment to consider whether there really was this mixture
in my character. On the whole, I by no means recognized the analysis,
but thought it not worth disputing.
"When I ask what I am to call myself to-day, Herbert," I went on, "I
suggest what I have in my thoughts. You say I am lucky. I know I have
done nothing to raise myself in life, and that Fortune alone has raised
me; that is being very lucky. And yet, when I think of Estella--"