they wait your commands anent the Letters of Phalaris. Asking your pardon,
time goes, and we should be speaking of this and not of child's toys."

I knew by the black blink of his eyes that I had heard what he would not;
and as they turned, my heart beat so that I laid my hand on it, as if that
poor fence might hide its throbbing. And for the first time in my life I
knew I had in this world an enemy, and that was this Varina; and from that
hour mine eyes waited on him.

More often mine eyes than my company, for, especially since this
conversation with Sir William, Mr Swift was now grown very cautious. In
public he addressed me as "Mrs Johnson," or, when Sir William rallied him,
as "Mrs Esther," affecting an awful distance, which was not in his heart,
for therein was still the tenderness for his child and pupil, as he had
used to call me. And he was good enough to signify to Mrs Dingley, who
carried it to me, that he found me grown to his liking; "beautiful,
graceful, and agreeable," says he, and condescended to praise even my
black hair and pale face, after which I would not have exchanged it
against the golden hair of Helen. But still held aloof except when I was
in company with others. And I took note that, of all the ladies that came
and went at Moor Park, there was not one but hung upon his talk, and held
up her head when he came near, spreading out all her graces. Mr Swift had
always that power with our sex and, if he used it, 't is but what all men
do. Providence made us fair game, to our undoing and theirs. 'T is not all
men who have this gift, and never have I seen one who, having it, spared
to use it, whether from liking or policy.

Yet he used it strangely. I remember, when the fair Lady Mary Fane came to
Moor Park,--a widowed beauty and toast,--the look of scorn she cast from
her fine eyes on the young secretary.