Early in 1836 the quiet of Herne Hill was fluttered by a long-promised,
long-postponed visit. Mr. Domecq at last brought his four younger
daughters to make the acquaintance of their English friends. The eldest
sister had lately been married to a Count Maison, heir to a peer of
France; for Mr. Domecq, thanks in great measure to his partner's energy
and talents, was prosperous and wealthy, and moved in the enchanted
circles of Parisian society.

To a romantic schoolboy in a London suburb the apparition was dazzling.
Any of the sisters would have charmed him, but the eldest of the four,
Adèle Clotilde, bewitched him at once with her graceful figure and that
oval face which was so admired in those times. She was fair,
too--another recommendation. He was on the brink of seventeen, at the
ripe moment, and he fell passionately in love with her. She was only
fifteen, and did not understand this adoration, unspoken and unexpressed
except by intensified shyness; for he was a very shy boy in the
drawing-room, though brimming over with life and fun among his
schoolfellows. His mother's ideals of education did not include French
gallantry; he felt at a loss before these Paris-bred, Paris-dressed
young ladies, and encumbered by the very strength of his new-found
passion.

And yet he possessed advantages, if he had known how to use them. He was
tall and active, light and lithe in gesture, not a clumsy hobbledehoy.
He had the face that caught the eye, in Rome a few years later, of
Keats' Severn, no mean judge, surely, of faces and poet's faces. He was
undeniably clever; he knew all about minerals and mountains; he was
quite an artist, and a printed poet. But these things weigh little with