At dinner he was seated next to Lady Annabel, and it was impossible
for any person to be more deferential, soft, and insinuating. He spoke
of old days with emotion which he did not attempt to suppress; he
alluded to the present with infinite delicacy. But it was very
difficult to make way. Lady Annabel was courteous, but she was
reserved. His lively reminiscences elicited from her no corresponding
sentiment; and no art would induce her to dwell upon the present. If
she only would have condescended to compliment him, it would have
given him an opportunity of expressing his distaste of the life which
he now led, and a description of the only life which he wished to
lead; but Lady Annabel studiously avoided affording him any opening
of the kind. She treated him like a stranger. She impressed upon him
without effort that she would only consider him an acquaintance. How
Cadurcis, satiated with the incense of the whole world, sighed for one
single congratulation from Lady Annabel! Nothing could move her.
'I was so surprised to meet you last night,' at length he again
observed. 'I have made so many inquiries after you. Our dear friend
the Bishop was, I fear, almost wearied with my inquiries after
Cherbury. I know not how it was, I felt quite a pang when I heard that
you had left it, and that all these years, when I have been conjuring
up so many visions of what was passing under that dear roof, you were
at Weymouth.
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