And certainly not the
least important of those, both in his own estimation and that of the
sprightly Anabella, was George Balgarnie, a young man who had only a
year before succeeded to the property of Balgruddery, somewhere in the
north, and of whom we might say that, in forming him, Nature had taken
so much pains with the building up of the body, that she had forgotten
the mind, so that he had no more spiritual matter in him than sufficed
to keep his blood hot, and enable his sensual organs to work out their
own selfish gratifications; or, to perpetrate a metaphor, he was all the
polished mahogany of a piano, without any more musical springs than
might respond to one keynote of selfishness. And surely Anabella had
approved herself to the fop to some purpose; for when our sempstress
with her bundle had got into the parlour of the fine lady, she
encountered no other than Balgarnie--a circumstance apparently of very
small importance; but we know that a moment of time is sometimes like a
small seed, which contains the nucleus of a great tree--perhaps a
poisonous one. And so it turned out that, while Anabella was gloating
over the beautiful work of the timid embroideress, Balgarnie was busy
admiring the artist, but not merely--perhaps not at all--as an artist,
only as an object over whom he wished to exercise power.
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