as an ungrateful brute, and moralised like Timon.

There was at that time living in London a lady whom I must call Mrs.
A. She was the widow of a professor at Cambridge who had died
young, and she might have been about five-and-thirty or forty years
old. My cousin, who had known her husband, introduced me to her.
She was not handsome; the cheek-bones were a little too prominent,
and her face was weather-worn, but not by wind and sun.
Nevertheless it was a quietly victorious face. Her ways were simple
and refined. She had travelled much, as far even as Athens, and was
complete mistress of Italian and French. Her voice struck me--it
was so musical, and adapted itself so delicately to varying shades
of thought and emotion. I have often reflected how little we get
out of the voice in talking. How delightful is the natural
modulation which follows the sense, and how much the sense gains if
it is so expressed rather than in half-inarticulate grunts, say,
between the inspirations and expirations of a short pipe!

Mrs. A. took much notice of me, and her attitude towards me was
singular. She was not quite old enough to be motherly to me, but
she was too old for restrictions on her intercourse with me, and her
wide experience and wisdom well qualified her to be my directress.
Often when I went to her house nobody was there, and she would talk
to me with freedom on all sorts of subjects. I did not fall in love
with her, but she was still attractive as a woman, and difference of
sex, delightful manners, subtle intellect, expressive grey eyes, and
lovely black hair streaked with white, might have taught me much
which I could have learned from no ordinary friend. My cousin often
went with me to Mrs. A.'s, but I was never at rest when he was
there. I fancied then that if I could have rendered a dozen lines