Sometimes
he borrows the lineaments of an insane tom-cat, sometimes those of a
delirious hyena; occasionally, but very seldom, he discards these
perilous attractions and assumes an air not above 100 degrees removed
from mild and gentleman-like.' But he was particularly attentive to
Charlotte; and as he was the first really intelligent man she had met,
the first man, that is to say, with intellectual interests--for we know
how much she despised the curates of her neighbourhood--she rejoiced at
every opportunity of doing verbal battle with him, for Charlotte
inherited, it may be said, the Irish love of debate. Some time after
Charlotte had returned to England, and when in the height of her fame,
she met her Brussels school-fellow in London. Miss Wheelwright asked her
whether she still corresponded with M. Heger. Charlotte replied that she
had discontinued to do so. M. Heger had mentioned in one letter that his
wife did not like the correspondence, and he asked her therefore to
address her letters to the Royal Athenee, where, as I have mentioned, he
gave lessons to the boys. 'I stopped writing at once,' Charlotte told
her friend. 'I would not have dreamt of writing to him when I found it
was disagreeable to his wife; certainly I would not write unknown to
her.' 'She said this,' Miss Wheelwright adds, 'with the sincerity of
manner which characterised her every utterance, and I would sooner have
doubted myself than her.
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