On May 11, 1873 (I will endeavour to rival the Professor in accuracy and
preciseness), I got a short note from dear Nora, dated from South
Kensington, which I, too (though not from psychical motives), have
carefully preserved. I will not publish it, however, either here or in
the Society's Proceedings, for reasons which will probably be obvious to
any of my readers who happen ever to have been placed in similar
circumstances themselves. Disengaging the kernel of fact from the
irrelevant matter in which it was imbedded, I may state that Nora wrote
me somewhat to this effect. She was going next day to the Academy with
the parents of some schoolfellow; could I manage to run up to town for
the day, go to the Academy myself, and meet her "quite accidentally, you
know, dear," in the Water-colour room about half-past eleven?
This was rather awkward; for next day, as it happened, was precisely the
Professor's morning for the Herodotus lecture; but circumstances like
mine at that moment know no law. So I succeeded in excusing myself from
attendance somehow or other (I hope truthfully) and took the nine a.m.
express up to town. Shortly after eleven I was at the Academy, and
waiting anxiously for Nora's arrival. That dear little hypocrite, the
moment she saw me approach, assumed such an inimitable air of infantile
surprise and innocent pleasure at my unexpected appearance that I
positively blushed for her wicked powers of deception.
"_You_ here, Mr. Mansfield!" she cried in a tone of the most apparently
unaffected astonishment, "why, I thought it was full term time; surely
you ought to be up at Oriel."
"So I am," I answered, "officially; but in my private capacity I've come
up for the day to look at the pictures."
"Oh, how nice!" said that shocking little Nora, with a smile that was
childlike and bland. "Mr. Mansfield is such a great critic, Mrs.
Worplesdon; he knows all about art, and artists, and so on. He'll be
able to tell us which pictures we ought to admire, you know, and which
aren't worth looking at. Mr. Worplesdon, let me introduce you; Mrs.
Worplesdon--Miss Worplesdon. How very lucky we should have happened to
come across you, Mr. Mansfield!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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