And Mr. Pericles sank into his bear again, while Wilfrid Pole, who was
swinging his long cavalry legs to rearward, shouted; and Mr. Sumner, a
rising young barrister, walking beside Cornelia, smiled a smile of
extreme rigidity. Arabella was punished for claiming rights of birth.
She heard the murmuring course of the dialogue between Cornelia and Mr.
Sumner, sufficiently clear to tell her it was not fictitious and was well
sustained, while her heart was kept thirsting for the key to it. In
advance were Adela and Edward Buxley, who was only a rich alderman's only
son, but had the virtue of an extraordinary power of drawing caricatures,
and was therefore useful in exaggerating the features of disagreeable
people, and showing how odious they were: besides endearing pleasant ones
exhibiting how comic they could be. Gossips averred that before Mr. Pole
had been worried by his daughters into giving that mighty sum for
Brookfield, Arabella had accepted Edward as her suitor; but for some
reason or other he had apparently fallen from his high estate. To tell
the truth, Arabella conceived that he had simply obeyed her wishes, while
he knew he was naughtily following his own; and Adela, without
introspection at all, was making her virgin effort at the caricaturing of
our sex in his person: an art for which she promised well.

Out of the long black shadows of the solitary trees of the park, and
through low yellow moonlight, they passed suddenly into the muffed ways
of the wood. Mr. Pericles was ineffably provoking. He had come for
gallantry's sake, and was not to be rallied, and would echo every
question in a roar, and there was no drawing of the man out at all. He
knocked against branches, and tripped over stumps, and ejaculated with
energy; but though he gave no heed or help to his fair associate, she
thought not the worse of him, so heroic can women be toward any creature
that will permit himself to be clothed by a mystery. At times the party
hung still, fancying the voice aloft, and then, after listening to the