Doddleson. He sat and talked with her of the future--that future which in
their secret thoughts both held to be a sweet sad fable--the hyperborean
garden of their dreams. And after spending this too sweet, too bitter
hour with his beloved, Mr. Hawkehurst would diplomatise in order to have
a little talk with Diana as he left the house. Did Diana think his dear
girl better to-day, or worse--surely not worse? He had fancied she had
more colour, more of her old gaiety of manner. She had seemed a little
feverish; but that might be the excitement of his visit. And so on, and
so on, with sad and dreary repetition.
And then, having gone away from that house with an aching heart, the
young magazine-writer went back to his lodgings, and plunged into the
dashing essay or the smart pleasant story which was to constitute his
monthly contribution to the _Cheapside_ or the _Charing Cross_. Gaiety,
movement, rollicking, Harry Lorrequer-like spirits were demanded for the
_Cheapside_; a graceful union of brilliancy and depth was required for
the _Charing Cross_. And, O, be sure the critics lay in wait to catch the
young scribbler tripping! An anachronism here, a secondhand idea there,
and the _West End Wasp_ shrieked its war-whoop in an occasional note; or
the _Minerva_ published a letter from a correspondent in the Scilly
Islands, headed "Another Literary Jack Sheppard," to say that in his
"Imperial Dictionary" he had discovered with profound indignation a whole
column of words feloniously and mendaciously appropriated by the writer
of such and such an article in the _Cheapside_.
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