It seemed to him that he ought to find them in his own experience, as a man of the world and an almost public character; but they were not there, and he was ashamed to confess to himself--much more to reveal to Eugenia by interrogations possibly too innocent--the unfurnished condition of this repository.
It appeared to him that he could get much nearer, as he would have said, to his nephew; though he was not sure that Felix was altogether safe.
He was so bright and handsome and talkative that it was impossible not to think well of him; and yet it seemed as if there were something almost impudent, almost vicious--or as if there ought to be--in a young man being at once so joyous and so positive. It was to be observed that while Felix was not at all a serious young man there was somehow more of him--he had more weight and volume and resonance--than a number of young men who were distinctly serious. While Mr. Wentworth meditated upon this anomaly his nephew was admiring him unrestrictedly.
He thought him a most delicate, generous, high-toned old gentleman, with a very handsome head, of the ascetic type, which he promised himself the profit of sketching. Felix was far from having made a secret of the fact that he wielded the paint-brush, and it was not his own fault if it failed to be generally understood that he was prepared to execute the most striking likenesses on the most reasonable terms.
"He is an artist--my cousin is an artist," said Gertrude; and she offered this information to every one who would receive it.
She offered it to herself, as it were, by way of admonition and reminder; she repeated to herself at odd moments, in lonely places, that Felix was invested with this sacred character. Gertrude had never seen an artist before; she had only read about such people.
They seemed to her a romantic and mysterious class, whose life was made up of those agreeable accidents that never happened to other persons.