His eyes could not
shine so, his mouth could not have that childlike--the doctor
called it childish--smile otherwise. He put out various feelers to
satisfy himself there was no pretence, and found his allusions
either passed over him like a breath of merest air, or actually
puzzled him. It was not always that Cosmo did not know what the
suggestion MIGHT mean, but that he could not believe Jermyn meant
that; and perceiving this, the doctor would make haste to alter the
shadow into something definitely unobjectionable. Jermyn had no
design of corrupting the youth; he was above that, even could he
have fancied anything to be gained by it, whereas his interest lay
in the opposite direction, his object being to use the lad
unconsciously to himself. He discovered also concerning him that he
had lofty ideas of duty in everything; that he was very trusting,
and unready to doubt; and that with him poetry was not, as with
Lady Joan, a delight, but an absolute passion. After such
discoveries, he judged it would not be hard to make for. himself,
as for an idol, a high place in the imagination of the boy. For
this end he brought to bear upon him his choicest fragments of
knowledge, and all his power to interest; displayed in pleasing
harmonies his acquaintance with not a few of the more delicate
phases of humanity, and his familiarity with the world of
imagination as embodied in books; professed much admiration he did
not feel, in the line of Cosmo's admiration, going into raptures,
for instance, over Milton's profoundest gems, whose beauty he felt
only in a kind of reflected cold-moony way, through the external
perfection of their colour and carving; brought to his notice
Wordsworth's HAPPY WARRIOR, of which he professed, and truly, that
he had pasted it on his wall when a student, that at any moment he
might read it; and introduced him to the best poems of Shelley, a
favour for which alone Cosmo felt as if he must serve him for life.
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