as the dogs and pets of the Comic Spirit, had been curiously attentive
three years earlier, long before the public announcement of his
engagement to the beautiful Miss Durham, on the day of Sir Willoughby's
majority, when Mrs. Mountstuart Jenkinson said her word of him. Mrs.
Mountstuart was a lady certain to say the remembered, if not the right,
thing. Again and again was it confirmed on days of high celebration,
days of birth or bridal, how sure she was to hit the mark that rang the
bell; and away her word went over the county: and had she been an
uncharitable woman she could have ruled the county with an iron rod of
caricature, so sharp was her touch. A grain of malice would have sent
county faces and characters awry into the currency. She was wealthy and
kindly, and resembled our mother Nature in her reasonable antipathies
to one or two things which none can defend, and her decided preference
of persons that shone in the sun. Her word sprang out of her. She
looked at you, and forth it came: and it stuck to you, as nothing
laboured or literary could have adhered. Her saying of Laetitia Dale:
"Here she comes with a romantic tale on her eyelashes," was a portrait
of Laetitia. And that of Vernon Whitford: "He is a Phoebus Apollo
turned fasting friar," painted the sunken brilliancy of the lean
long-walker and scholar at a stroke.

Of the young Sir Willoughby, her word was brief; and there was the
merit of it on a day when he was hearing from sunrise to the setting of
the moon salutes in his honour, songs of praise and Ciceronian eulogy.
Rich, handsome, courteous, generous, lord of the Hall, the feast and
the dance, he excited his guests of both sexes to a holiday of
flattery. And, says Mrs. Mountstuart, while grand phrases were mouthing
round about him, "You see he has a leg."

That you saw, of course. But after she had spoken you saw much more.