What can be more unnatural! It alone ought to produce a
revolution. Why, Alfred is the only fellow who has made a
coup; and then he has not got it down."
"She behaved in a most unprincipled manner to me--that Fitz-
Warene," said Lord Milford, "always took my bouquets and once
made me write some verses."
"By Jove!" said Lord Eugene, "I should like to see them. What
a bore it must have been to write verses."
"I only copied them out of Mina Blake's album: but I sent them
in my own handwriting."
Baffled sympathy was the cause of Egremont's gloom. It is the
secret spring of most melancholy. He loved and loved in vain.
The conviction that his passion, though hopeless, was not
looked upon with disfavour, only made him the more wretched,
for the disappointment is more acute in proportion as the
chance is better. He had never seen Sybil since the morning
he quitted her in Smith's Square, immediately before her
departure for the North. The trial of Gerard had taken place
at the assizes of that year: he had been found guilty and
sentenced to eighteen months imprisonment in York Castle; the
interference of Egremont both in the House of Commons and with
the government saved him from the felon confinement with which
he was at first threatened, and from which assuredly state
prisoners should be exempt.
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