It was as graceful on
Henrietta's part to believe that Mr. Bantling took an interest in
the diffusion of lively journalism and in consolidating the position
of lady-correspondents as it was on the part of his companion to
suppose that the cause of the Interviewer- a periodical of which he
never formed a very definite conception- was, if subtly analyzed (a
task to which Mr. Bantling felt himself quite equal), but the cause of
Miss Stackpole's need of demonstrative affection. Each of these
groping celibates supplied at any rate a want of which the other was
impatiently conscious. Mr. Bantling, who was of rather a slow and a
discursive habit, relished a prompt, keen, positive woman, who charmed
him by the influence of a shining, challenging eye and a kind of
bandbox freshness, and who kindled a perception of raciness in a
mind to which the usual fare of life seemed unsalted. Henrietta, on
the other hand, enjoyed the society of a gentleman who appeared
somehow, in his way, made, by expensive, roundabout, almost "quaint"
processes, for her use, and whose leisured state, though generally
indefensible, was a decided boon to a breathless mate, and who was
furnished with an easy, traditional, though by no means exhaustive,
answer to almost any social or practical question that could come
up.
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