For two summers he had paid a great deal of attention to a titled lady
who owned some property, and his prospects were the general topic,
when he suddenly disappeared from high life and became engaged to a
poor girl, the daughter of a cooper, who owned no property whatever.
His friends were puzzled and could not understand how he could thus
stand in his own light. He had laid his plans so well, he "had but to
stretch out his hand and success was in his grasp"; he had the morsel
firmly stuck on his fork, it was only necessary for him to open his
mouth and swallow it. He himself was at a loss to understand how it
was that the face of a little girl whom he had met but once on a steamer
could have upset all his plans of many years' standing. He was bewitched,
obsessed.
He asked his friends whether they didn't think her beautiful?
Frankly speaking they didn't.
"But she is so clever! Just look into her eyes! What expressive eyes
she has!"
His friends could see nothing and hear less, for the girl never opened
her lips.
But he spent evening after evening with the cooper's family; to be
sure, the cooper was a very intelligent man! On his knees before her
(a trick often practised at the country houses) he held her skeins of
wool; he played and sang to her, talked about religion and the drama,
and he always read acquiescence in her eyes.
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