I was a great deal too proud to let him perceive my resentment--I was just as usual--I trifled and laughed, read my Italian, and made blunders, and asked questions; and, in those intervals of which I have spoken, I listened to what he had to say, took the books he offered, and thanked him with a smile, but with no great fervour. The temperature of our town drawing-room was perceptibly cooler than that of Malory, and the distance between our two chairs had appreciably increased. Nevertheless, we were apparently, at least, very good friends. But terms like these are sometimes difficult to maintain. I was vexed at his seeming to acquiesce so easily in my change of manner, which, imperceptible to any one else, I somehow knew could not be hidden from him. I had brought down, and laid on the drawing-room table at which we sat, the only book which I then had belonging to Mr. Carmel. It was rather a dark day. Something in the weather made me a little more cross than usual. Miss Pounden was, according to her wont, flitting to and fro, and not minding in the least what we read or said. I laid down my Tasso, and laughed. Mr. Carmel looked at me a little puzzled. "That, I think, is the most absurd stanza we have read. I ought, I suppose, to say the most sublime. But it is as impossible to read it without laughing as to read the rest without yawning." I said this with more scorn than I really felt, but it certainly was one of those passages in which good Homer nods. A hero's head is cut off, I forget his name--a kinsman, I daresay, of Saint Denis; and he is so engrossed with the battle that he forgets his loss, and goes on fighting for some time. "I hope it is not very wrong, and very stupid, but I am so tired of the _Gerusalemme Liberata_." He looked at me for a moment or two. I think he did not comprehend the spirit in which I said all this, but perhaps he suspected something of it--he looked a little pained. "But, I hope, you are not tired of Italian? There are other authors." "Yes, so there are. I should like Ariosto, I daresay. I like fairy-tales, and that is the reason, I think, I like reading the lives of the saints, and the other books you have been so kind as to lend me." I said this quite innocently, but there was a great deal of long-husbanded cruelty in it. He dropped his fine eyes to the table, and leaned for a short time on his hand. "Well, even so, it is something gained to have read them," meditated Mr. Carmel, and looking up at me, he added, "and we never know by what childish instincts and simple paths we may be led to the sublimest elevations." There was so much gentleness in his tone and looks that my heart smote me. My momentary compunction, however, did not prevent my going on, now that I had got fairly afloat. "I have brought down the book you were so kind as to lend me last week. I am sure it is very eloquent, but there's so much I cannot understand."