Did my vanity then suggest that I myself,
individually, could fall within the line of his terrors? Certainly not,
as regarded any physical pretensions that I could plead; for Fanny (as
a chance passenger from her own neighbourhood once told me) counted in
her train a hundred and ninety-nine professed admirers, if not open
aspirants to her favour; and probably not one of the whole brigade but
excelled myself in personal advantages. Ulysses even, with the unfair
advantage of his accursed bow, could hardly have undertaken that amount
of suitors. So the danger might have seemed slight--only that woman is
universally aristocratic; it is amongst her nobilities of heart that
she _is_ so. Now, the aristocratic distinctions in my favour might
easily with Miss Fanny have compensated my physical deficiencies. Did I
then make love to Fanny? Why, yes; about as much love as one
_could_ make whilst the mail was changing horses--a process which,
ten years later, did not occupy above eighty seconds; but _then_,--
viz., about Waterloo--it occupied five times eighty. Now, four hundred
seconds offer a field quite ample enough for whispering into a young
woman's ear a great deal of truth, and (by way of parenthesis) some
trifle of falsehood. Grandpapa did right, therefore, to watch me. And
yet, as happens too often to the grandpapas of earth in a contest with
the admirers of granddaughters, how vainly would he have watched me had
I meditated any evil whispers to Fanny! She, it is my belief, would
have protected herself against any man's evil suggestions.
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