If a person be honest and trustworthy, the art of veneering is almost
beyond his grasp. His smile is a true smile, and his frown a sincere
frown; he will not caress you with one hand and cruelly smite you with
the other; he can never be a friend to your face and a foe when your
back is turned. If he loves you it is written on every feature of his
truthful countenance, if he despises you he will show it to you alone.
I doubt if there ever lived a more honest or trustworthy being than
Ernest Dalton.
It was a temptation to fall in love with a man like him, with his
depth of character and his strength of feeling, with truth and wisdom
on his lips, with honor and virtue in his heart. According to our
common ideas of men and what we would like them to be, it was little
wonder that Hortense and I both knowing Ernest Dalton, should have
leaned towards him impulsively from the first, though his years were
double our own. So tall and so dignified as he was, with such a
striking face and such engaging manners, so courteous, so clever, so
good, and he was not yet old, the sprinkling of gray in the hair that
crept over his handsome brow seemed to lend fresh vigour to his looks
and confirm the character which his appearance otherwise insinuated.
But all this was nothing to _me now_, no more than if it had been some
passing dream of summer sun-light and flowers; no more than if some
optical illusion had dazzled my eyes and gladdened my heart for a
short moment, and left me as suddenly again, with my tame and
common-place reality.
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