This page has been validated.
PAUL CLIFFORD.
139
CHAPTER VI.
Why did she love him?—curious fool, be still!
Is human love the growth of human will?
To her he might be gentleness!—Lord Byron.
In three weeks from the time of his arrival, Captain Clifford was the most admired man in Bath. It is true, that gentlemen who have a quicker tact as to the respectability of their own sex than women, might have looked a little shy upon him, had he not himself especially shunned appearing intrusive, and indeed rather avoided the society of men than courted it; so that after he had fought a duel with a Baronet, (the son of a shoe-maker,) who called him one Clifford, and had exhibited a flea-bitten horse, allowed to be the finest in Bath, he rose insensibly
