In public, she is a very Zenobia, who keeps all animals
of the other sex at an awful distance; and of the fifty young puppies
who are raving about her beauty, her air, and her voice, not one has
obtained an introduction; while Claude, whose studio used to be a
favourite lounge of young Guardsmen, has, as civilly as he can, closed
his doors to those magnificent personages ever since the new singer
became his guest.
Claude Mellot seems to have come into a fortune of late years, large
enough, at least, for his few wants. He paints no longer, save when he
chooses; and has taken a little old house in one of those back lanes
of Brompton, where islands of primaeval nursery garden still remain
undevoured by the advancing surges of the brick and mortar deluge.
There he lives, happy in a green lawn, and windows opening thereon;
in three elms, a cork, an ilex, and a mulberry, with a great standard
pear, for flower and foliage the queen of all suburban trees. There he
lies on the lawn, upon strange skins, the summer's day, playing with
cats and dogs, and making love to his Sabina, who has not lost
her beauty in the least, though she is on the wrong side of
five-and-thirty. He deludes himself, too, into the belief that he is
doing something, because he is writing a treatise on the "Principles
of Beauty;" which will be published, probably, about the time the
Thames is purified, in the season of Latter Lammas and the Greek
Kalends; and the more certainly so, because he has wandered into the
abyss of conic sections and curves of double curvature, of which, if
the truth must be spoken, he knows no more than his friends of the
Life Guards Green.
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