one deeply in an intellectual sense; I do not see him or know him
as a man. All the others are subordinate. I have esteem for some,
and, I trust, courtesy for all. I do not, of course, know what
they thought of me, but I believe most of them expected me to
come out in a more marked, eccentric, striking light. I believe
they desired more to admire and more to blame. I felt
sufficiently at my ease with all but Thackeray; with him I was
fearfully stupid."

She returned to her quiet home, and her noiseless daily duties.
Her father had quite enough of the spirit of hero-worship in him
to make him take a vivid pleasure in the accounts of what she had
heard and whom she had seen. It was on the occasion of one of her
visits to London that he had desired her to obtain a sight of
Prince Albert's armoury, if possible. I am not aware whether she
managed to do this; but she went to one or two of the great
national armouries in order that she might describe the stern
steel harness and glittering swords to her father, whose
imagination was forcibly struck by the idea of such things; and
often afterwards, when his spirits flagged and the languor of old
age for a time got the better of his indomitable nature, she
would again strike on the measure wild, and speak about the
armies of strange weapons she had seen in London, till he resumed
his interest in the old subject, and was his own keen, warlike,
intelligent self again.



CHAPTER V