Yes! I can find him out when I am away from
him--I know he flatters my vanity, when I think of him up here in
my own room--and yet, when I go downstairs, and get into his
company again, he will blind me again, and I shall be flattered
again, just as if I had never found him out at all! He can manage
me as he manages his wife and Laura, as he managed the bloodhound
in the stable-yard, as he manages Sir Percival himself, every hour
in the day. "My good Percival! how I like your rough English
humour!"--"My good Percival! how I enjoy your solid English
sense!" He puts the rudest remarks Sir Percival can make on his
effeminate tastes and amusements quietly away from him in that
manner--always calling the baronet by his Christian name, smiling
at him with the calmest superiority, patting him on the shoulder,
and bearing with him benignantly, as a good-humoured father bears
with a wayward son.
The interest which I really cannot help feeling in this strangely
original man has led me to question Sir Percival about his past
life.
Sir Percival either knows little, or will tell me little, about
it. He and the Count first met many years ago, at Rome, under the
dangerous circumstances to which I have alluded elsewhere.
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