Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, page 49 by Various Authors
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it of deploring the fate of people who were not born and brought up in Belfield. Almost the entire population were descendants of the original proprietors of the soil, and we had our own ideas about our first families. Thorpe's views, however, were not flattering: he was, in fact, one of those elegant young men whose innermost souls are penetrated with convictions of the inadequacy of intellects in general to appreciate theirs in particular.
Both Jack and I passed sleepless nights at first, wretched at the thought of his sleeping beneath the same roof with Georgy Lenox--of his enjoying that mystical, beautiful experience of coming down every morning to find her at table with her hair freshly curled, to enjoy the felicity of passing her eggs and toast, to carve a slice for her from the joint which the welcome addition of the young man's payment for board allowed Mrs. Lenox to provide for her dinner. Then, too, we felt with a pang that he would receive with his unequalled grace all sorts of little services from the daughter of the house: she would pour his tea for him, counting the lumps of sugar and dropping cream upon them in the distracting way we knew; she would amuse him with her sweet-voiced chatter. He was so old, so handsome with his velvety eyes and his moustache, she might even fall in love with him. However, Georgy was not given to sentiment, and Tony, for his part, was utterly indifferent to her: indeed, the most exclusive circles in Belfield opened to him at once, for a young man with a moustache was a rara avis there, the masculine element in the village falling short of social requirements, as its representatives were generally either in their first or second childhood. But the only intimacy he cultivated was with me and my mother: he criticised everybody else, and it was evident that he considered nothing in Belfield quite good enough for him.
"What a great man my master is!" says the French valet: "nothing suits him." And it must be confessed that the valet's state of mind co