Page:What Will He Do With It? - Routledge - Volume 2.djvu/32

 now found across his shoulders, and striding from the house. When he entered his carriage, the footman stood waiting for orders. Darrell was long in giving them. "Anywhere for half an hour--to St. Paul's, then home." But on returning from this objectless plunge into the City, Darrell pulled the check-string: "To Belgrave Square--Lady Dulcett's."

The concert was half over; but Flora Vyvyan had still guarded, as she had promised, a seat beside herself for Darrell, by lending it for the present to one of her obedient vassals. Her face brightened as she saw Darrell enter and approach. The vassal surrendered the chair. Darrell appeared to be in the highest spirits; and I firmly believe that he was striving to the utmost in his power--what? to make himself agreeable to Flora Vyvyan? No; to make Flora Vyvyan agreeable to himself. The man did not presume that a fair young lady could be in love with him; perhaps he believed that, at his years, to be impossible. But he asked what seemed much easier, and was much harder--he asked to be himself in love.

CHAPTER V.

IT IS ASSERTED BY THOSE LEARNED MEN WHO HAVE DEVOTED THEIR LIVES TO  THE STUDY OF THE MANNERS AND HABIT OF INSECT SOCIETY, THAT WHEN A   SPIDER HAS LOST ITS LAST WEB, HAVING EXHAUSTED ALL THE GLUTINOUS MATTER WHEREWITH TO SPIN ANOTHER, IT STILL. PROTRACTS ITS INNOCENT EXISTENCE, BY OBTRUDING ITS NIPPERS ON SOME LESS WARLIKE BUT MORE RESPECTABLE SPIDER, POSSESSED OF A CONVENIENT HOME AND AN AIRY LARDER. OBSERVANT MORALISTS HAVE NOTICED THE SAME PECULIARITY IN  THE MANEATER, OR POCKET-CANNIBAL.

Eleven o'clock, A.M., Samuel Adolphus Poole, Esq., is in his parlour,--the house one of those new dwellings which yearly spring up north of the Regent's Park,--dwellings that, attesting the eccentricity of the national character, task the fancy of the architect and the gravity of the beholder--each tenement so tortured into contrast with the other, that, on one little rood of ground, all ages seemed blended, and all races encamped. No. 1 is an Egyptian tomb!--Pharaohs may repose there! No. 2 is a Swiss chalet--William Tell may be shooting in its garden! Lo! the severity of Doric columns--Sparta is before you! Behold that Gothic porch--you are rapt to the Norman days! Ha! those Elizabethan mullions--Sidney and Raleigh, rise