In truth, it is a sight full of sad warning, that ever-recurring spectacle of an engaged man (the lady is always provokingly at her ease) in general society.  His friends turn away in compassion and charity; the girls, whom he ought to have married and—­didn’t, look on, exchanging smiles with their mothers; it is their hour of savage triumph.  The French manage things more comfortably, I think.  The promessi sposi meet so seldom before the contract is signed—­between sentence and execution the time is so brief that there is little space for intermediate terrors.

Nature had not been bountiful to Mr. Bruce in externals.  He was very tall, with round shoulders, long, lean limbs, large feet and hands, and immense joints.  There was a good deal of strength about him, but it wanted concentration and arrangement.  His features were rather exaggerated and coarse in outline, with the high cheek-bones common on the north side of the Tweed; his hair of an unhappy vacillating color that could not make its mind up to be red; and his eyes, that rarely met you fairly, of a light cold gray.  About the mouth, in particular, there was a very unpleasant expression, alternately vicious and cunning.

I do not believe that his intimates, if he had any, in their wildest moments of conviviality, ever called him “Jack;” nor his mother, in his earliest childhood, “Johnnie.”  Plain “John Bruce” was written uncompromisingly in every line of his face; just the converse of Forrester, whom old maids of rigid virtue, after seeing him twice, were irresistibly impelled to speak of as “Charley.”

I wish some profound psychologist would give us his theory on the question of “The influence of nomenclature on disposition and destiny.”  It is all very well to ask, “What’s in a name?” I think there is a great deal; and that our sponsors have much to answer for in indulging their baptismal fancies.  Not to go into the subject (which some have already done without exhausting it), have you not remarked that Georgiana is always pretty and slightly sarcastic; that Isabella has large, soft, lustrous eyes—­generally they are dark; that Fanny invariably flirts; and that Kate is decided in character, if not haughty?

Tragedy and comedy both are forced to observe these nominal proprieties.  Who was it that illuminated his house, and had the church bells rung, on finding a name for his hero?  We should never have believed in Iago’s treacheries if he had appeared before us as simple “James.”

The new arrival seemed to have chilled us all into stupidity.  Dinner languished; and afterward, Guy, after trying at first to be laboriously civil—­the sense of duty was painfully evident—­lapsed into silence, passing the claret rather faster than usual, so that Mr. Raymond, to his intense disgust, had to make an effort and force the conversation.

When we entered, Isabel was nestling under Miss Bellasys’ wing, from which shelter she had to emerge at Bruce’s request for some music.  She went directly, and played several pieces that he asked for straight through, while he stood gravely behind her with a complacent air of proprietorship which was inexpressibly aggravating.