II. MONT VELAN 503

until, after I don’t know how many, a good chance came, worth all the penitentiary time endured before.

I had been introduced one evening, with a little more circumstance than usual, to a seated lady, beside whom it was evidently supposed I should hold it a privilege to stand for a minute or two, with leave to speak to her. I entirely concurred in that view of the matter; but, having ascertained in a moment that she was too pretty to be looked at, and yet keep one’s wits about one, I followed, in what talk she led me to, with my eyes on the ground. Presently, in some reference to Raphael or Michael Angelo, or the musical glasses,¹ the word “Rome” occurred; and a minute afterwards, something about “Christmas in 1840.” I looked up with a start; and saw that the face was oval,-fair,- the hair, light-brown. After a pause, I was rude enough to repeat her words, “Christmas in 1840!-were you in Rome then?” “Yes,” she said, a little surprised, and now meeting my eyes with hers, inquiringly.

Another tenth of a minute passed before I spoke again.

“Why, I lost all that winter in Rome in hunting you!”

It was Egeria herself!² then Mrs. Cowper-Temple. She was not angry; and became from that time forward a tutelary power,-of the brightest and happiest; differing from Lady Trevelyan’s, in that Lady Trevelyan hadn’t all her own way at home; and taught me, therefore, to look upon life as a “Spiritual combat”; but Egeria always had her own way everywhere,-thought that I also should have mine,-and generally got it for me.

29. She was able to get a good deal of it for me, almost immediately, at Broadlands, because Mr. Cowper-Temple was at that time Lord Palmerston’s private secretary: and it had chanced that in 1845 I had some correspondence with the government about Tintoret’s Crucifixion;³-not the great Crucifixion in the Scuola di San Rocco, but the

¹ [Vicar of Wakefield, ch. ix.]

² [See above, pp. 277, 349.]

³ [Really in 1852: see Vol. XII p. lxi.]

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