But how to declare his passion--that was the question. He saw that the initiatory steps, and very decided ones, must be taken on his part; and it was not easy to find the lady alone ten minutes together. People lived at Newport as if they were in the open air, and the volunteer police of ordinary gossip made private interviews between well-known people a matter of extreme difficulty. A Frenchman similarly placed would have brought the affair to a crisis much sooner: he would have found a thousand ways of disclosing his feelings, and at the same time dexterously leaving himself a loop-hole of escape. Very clever at these things are the Gauls; they will make an avowal in full ball-room, under cover of the music, if there is no other chance to be had. But tact in love affairs is not a characteristic of the Englishman, especially at Ashburner's age. He had none of this mischievous dexterity; perhaps it is just as well when a man has not, both for himself and for society. He thought of writing, and actually began many letters or notes, or billet-doux, or whatever they might be called; but they always seemed so absurd (as truly they were), that he invariably tore them up when half-finished. He thought of serving up his flame in verse (for about this time the unhappy youth wrote many verses, which on his return to sanity he very wisely made away with); but his emotion lay too deep for verse, and his performances seemed even to himself too ridiculous for him to dream of presenting them. Still he must make a beginning somehow; he could not ask her to run away with him apropos of nothing. One of his great anxieties, you may be sure, was to find out if any other man stood in his way, and who that man might be. His first impulses were to be indiscriminately jealous of every man he saw talking or walking with her; but on studying out alone the result of his observations, he could not discover that she affected any one man more than another. For this was one of her happy arts, that she made herself attractive to all without showing a marked preference for any one. White, who among his other accomplishments had a knack of quoting the standard poets, compared her to Pope's Belinda--saying, that her lively looks disclosed a sprightly mind, and that she extended smiles to all, and favors to none. So that Ashburner's jealousy could find no fixed object to light on. At one time he had been terribly afraid of Le Roi, chiefly from having heard the lady praise him for his accomplishments and agreeable manners. But once he heard Sedley say, that Mrs. Harrison had been worrying Le Roi half out of his wits, and quite out of his temper. "How so?" "Oh, she was praising you, and saying how much she liked the English character, and how true and honest your countrymen were--so much more to be depended on than the French--and more manly, too; and altogether she worked him up into such a rage against _ces insulaires_, that he went off ready to swear."