The door opened and closed--he was gone. I remained alone for a little, thinking what a strange disposition was his,--what a curious mixture of philosophy, worldliness, sentiment and satire seemed to run like the veins of a leaf through the variable temperament of this brilliant, semi-mysterious personage who had by mere chance become my greatest friend. We had now been more or less together for nearly a month, and I was no closer to the secret of his actual nature than I had been at first. Yet I admired him more than ever,--without his society I felt life would be deprived of half its charm. For though, attracted as human moths will be by the glare of my glittering millions, numbers of so-called 'friends' now surrounded me, there was not one among them who so dominated my every mood and with whom I had so much close sympathy as this man,--this masterful, half cruel, half kind companion of my days, who at times seemed to accept all life as the veriest bagatelle, and myself as a part of the trivial game. [1] A fact. VIII No man, I think, ever forgets the first time he is brought face to face with perfect beauty in woman. He may have caught fleeting glimpses of loveliness on many fair faces often,--bright eyes may have flashed on him like star-beams,--the hues of a dazzling complexion may now and then have charmed him, or the seductive outlines of a graceful figure;--all these are as mere peeps into the infinite. But when such vague and passing impressions are suddenly drawn together in one focus,--when all his dreamy fancies of form and colour take visible and complete manifestation in one living creature who looks down upon him as it were from an empyrean of untouched maiden pride and purity, it is more to his honour than his shame, if his senses swoon at the ravishing vision, and he, despite his rough masculinity and brute strength, becomes nothing but the merest slave to passion. In this way was I overwhelmed and conquered without any chance of deliverance when Sibyl Elton's violet eyes, lifted slowly from the shadow of their dark lashes, rested upon me with that indefinable expression of mingled interest and indifference which is supposed to indicate high breeding, but which more frequently intimidates and repulses the frank and sensitive soul. The Lady Sibyl's glance repelled, but I was none the less attracted. Rimânez and I had entered the Earl of Elton's box at the Haymarket between the first and second acts of the play, and the Earl himself, an unimpressive, bald-headed, red-faced old gentleman, with fuzzy white whiskers, had risen to welcome us, seizing the prince's hand and shaking it with particular effusiveness. (I learned afterwards that Lucio had lent him a thousand pounds on easy terms, a fact which partly accounted for the friendly fervour of his greeting.) His daughter had not moved; but a minute or two later when he addressed her somewhat sharply, saying