He had special confidence in his St. Gilles.
He had intended to read the Lester book all the way, but as we have seen, managed only a bare line or two; the Browning he had not intended even to have with him, but in some fashion, with the determined resolve that books so often show, it had crept into his bag and then was on his knee, he knew not whence, and soon out of self-defence against the old man he was reading "The Flight of the Duchess," carried away on the wings of its freedom, strength and colour.
Nevertheless, that is the kind of man I am, he thought, even the books force me to read them when I have no wish. And soon he had forgotten the old man, the carriage, the warm weather. How many years since he had read it? No matter. Wasn't it fine and touching and true? When he came to the place:
... the door opened and more than mortal
Stood, with a face where to my mind centred
All beauties I ever saw or shall see,
The Duchess—I stopped as if struck by palsy.
She was so different, happy and beautiful
I felt at once that all was best,
And that I had nothing to do, for the rest
But wait her commands, obey and be dutiful.
Not that, in fact, there was any commanding,
—I saw the glory of her eye
And the brow's height and the breast's expanding,
And I was hers to live or to die.
