chief subject of conversation, Percival could not but esteem him amongst
the most agreeable of men. With Helen, when Percival was not there,
Varney held some secret conferences,--secret even from Percival. Two or
three times, before the hour in which Percival was accustomed to come,
they had been out together; and Helen's face looked more cheerful than
usual on their return. It was not surprising that Gabriel Varney, so
displeasing to a man like Ardworth, should have won little less favour
with Helen than with Percival; for, to say nothing of an ease and suavity
of manner which stole into the confidence of those in whom to confide was
a natural propensity, his various acquisitions and talents, imposing from
the surface over which they spread, and the glitter which they made, had
an inevitable effect upon a mind so susceptible as Helen's to admiration
for art and respect for knowledge. But what chiefly conciliated her to
Varney, whom she regarded, moreover, as her aunt's most intimate friend,
was that she was persuaded he was unhappy, and wronged by the world of
fortune. Varney had a habit of so representing himself,--of dwelling
with a bitter eloquence, which his natural malignity made forcible, on
the injustice of the world to superior intellect. He was a great accuser
of Fate. It is the illogical weakness of some evil natures to lay all
their crimes, and the consequences of crime, upon Destiny. There was a
heat, a vigour, a rush of words, and a readiness of strong, if trite,
imagery in what Varney said that deceived the young into the monstrous
error that he was an enthusiast,--misanthropical, perhaps, but only so
from enthusiasm. How could Helen, whose slightest thought, when a star
broke forth from the cloud, or a bird sung suddenly from the copse, had
more of wisdom and of poetry than all Varney's gaudy and painted seemings
ever could even mimic,--how could she be so deceived? Yet so it was.
Here stood a man whose youth she supposed had been devoted to refined and
elevating pursuits, gifted, neglected, disappointed, solitary, and
unhappy. She saw little beyond. You had but to touch her pity to win