Page 142 - the-portrait-of-a-lady

readers that the young lady was both precipitate and un-
duly fastidious; but the latter of these facts, if the charge be
true, may serve to exonerate her from the discredit of the
former. She was not eager to convince herself that a territo-
rial magnate, as she had heard Lord Warburton called, was
smitten with her charms; the fact of a declaration from such
a source carrying with it really more questions than it would
answer. She had received a strong impression of his being a
‘personage,’ and she had occupied herself in examining the
image so conveyed. At the risk of adding to the evidence of
her self-sufficiency it must be said that there had been mo-
ments when this possibility of admiration by a personage
represented to her an aggression almost to the degree of an
affront, quite to the degree of an inconvenience. She had
never yet known a personage; there had been no personag-
es, in this sense, in her life; there were probably none such at
all in her native land. When she had thought of individual
eminence she had thought of it on the basis of character and
wit—of what one might like in a gentleman’s mind and in
his talk. She herself was a character—she couldn’t help be-
ing aware of that; and hitherto her visions of a completed
consciousness had connected themselves largely with moral
images—things as to which the question would be whether
they pleased her sublime soul. Lord Warburton loomed up
before her, largely and brightly, as a collection of attributes
and powers which were not to be measured by this simple
rule, but which demanded a different sort of appreciationan
appreciation that the girl, with her habit of judging quickly
and freely, felt she lacked patience to bestow. He appeared

142 The Portrait of a Lady