Page:Lady Barbarity; a romance (IA ladybarbarityrom00snai).pdf/81

 There was a depth and brevity about these words that startled me out of my lightheartedness. I had never guessed that this old barbarian kept such a chord locked up in his heart. In five-and-twenty years I had not touched it till this instant, and why or how I had done so now I did not know.

Meantime I sat in silent fascination at the fine and sorrowful power that had come into his voice, and hearkened with all my ears to everything he had to say.

"Bab," says he, with a gentle smile that was intended to conceal his unaccustomed gravity, "man is a whimsical animal, I am aware. But there is one thing in him that even a woman must deal with mercifully. You have perhaps not heard of what he calls his honour. The omission is not yours, my pretty lady; your angelic sex rises superior to honour and little flippancies of that kind. But your papa suffers from his sex, and is, therefore, tainted with their foolish heresies. He hath also what he calls his honour; and a certain young person whom I will not blame, but who, I may say, is as greatly celebrated for her beauty as her wit, hath quite unconsciously put her foot upon it. And that spot is so tender that she must forgive the victim if he groans."

He smiled a charming, melancholy smile, and made me think of those noble velvet gentlemen by Vandyck upon the walls of our state chambers, whom I would stand and look at hours together and make love with all my heart to when I was a