too fine and pure for the breath of this world. When I spoke to him
and he came and held out his hand and smiled at me I felt a sudden
strange pity for him--quite as if he had been an orphan or a
changeling or stamped with some social stigma. It was impossible to
be in fact more exempt from these misfortunes, and yet, as one kissed
him, it was hard to keep from murmuring all tenderly "Poor little
devil!" though why one should have applied this epithet to a living
cherub is more than I can say. Afterwards indeed I knew a trifle
better; I grasped the truth of his being too fair to live, wondering
at the same time that his parents shouldn't have guessed it and have
been in proportionate grief and despair. For myself I had no doubt
of his evanescence, having already more than once caught in the fact
the particular infant charm that's as good as a death-warrant.

The lady who had been sitting with Mrs. Ambient was a jolly ruddy
personage in velveteen and limp feathers, whom I guessed to be the
vicar's wife--our hostess didn't introduce me--and who immediately
began to talk to Ambient about chrysanthemums. This was a safe
subject, and yet there was a certain surprise for me in seeing the
author of "Beltraffio" even in such superficial communion with the
Church of England. His writings implied so much detachment from that
institution, expressed a view of life so profane, as it were, so
independent and so little likely in general to be thought edifying,
that I should have expected to find him an object of horror to vicars
and their ladies--of horror repaid on his own part by any amount of
effortless derision. This proved how little I knew as yet of the
English people and their extraordinary talent for keeping up their
forms, as well as of some of the mysteries of Mark Ambient's hearth
and home. I found afterwards that he had, in his study, between
nervous laughs and free cigar-puffs, some wonderful comparisons for