"I seem to
have a faculty of impressing my friends with the notion that I could do
something tremendous if only I tried; whereas I know that this belief of
theirs is only a delusion."
"But you do not try, Leo," said this persistent counsellor. "No? life is
too pleasant for you; you have not enthusiasm; why, your talk is always
_persiflage_--it is the talk of the fashionable world. And you an
artist!"
However, at this moment Lionel suddenly discovered that this leisurely
stroll was likely to make them late in getting to the theatre; so that
perforce they had to leave these peaceful glades of the Green Park and
get into Piccadilly, where they jumped into a hansom-cab and were
rapidly whirled away eastward.
But if Lionel was to be reproached for his lack of ambition, that was a
charge which could not be brought against certain of those fashionable
friends of his at whom Nina (in unconscious collusion with Maurice
Mangan) seemed inclined to look askance. At the very height of the
London season Lady Adela Cunyngham and her sisters, Lady Sybil and Lady
Rosamund Bourne, had taken the town by storm; and it seemed probable
that, before they departed for Scotland, they would leave quite a trail
of glory behind them in the social firmament.
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