his heart, like hers, had remained cold. But he had never felt, as she
had, the desire to love. He was not now rejoicing, as she was, in the
sensation of first love; nay, he was furiously mortified by it, and
struggled with all his might against it. He had always fancied himself
secure against any so vulgar peril; always fancied that by him at
least, the proud old motto of his family--"Pas si bete"--would not be
belied. And I daresay, indeed, that had he never met Zuleika, the
irresistible, he would have lived, and at a very ripe old age died, a
dandy without reproach. For in him the dandiacal temper had been
absolute hitherto, quite untainted and unruffled. He was too much
concerned with his own perfection ever to think of admiring any one
else. Different from Zuleika, he cared for his wardrobe and his
toilet-table not as a means to making others admire him the more, but
merely as a means through which he could intensify, a ritual in which
to express and realise, his own idolatry. At Eton he had been called
"Peacock," and this nick-name had followed him up to Oxford. It was
not wholly apposite, however. For, whereas the peacock is a fool even
among birds, the Duke had already taken (besides a particularly
brilliant First in Mods) the Stanhope, the Newdigate, the Lothian, and
the Gaisford Prize for Greek Verse. And these things he had achieved
currente calamo, "wielding his pen," as Scott said of Byron, "with the
easy negligence of a nobleman." He was now in his third year of
residence, and was reading, a little, for Literae Humaniores. There is
no doubt that but for his untimely death he would have taken a
particularly brilliant First in that school also.

For the rest, he had many accomplishments. He was adroit in the
killing of all birds and fishes, stags and foxes. He played polo,
cricket, racquets, chess, and billiards as well as such things can be
played. He was fluent in all modern languages, had a very real talent