ful tale.' No one has introduced you as that young lady whose extraordinary talents have delighted all the world. I suspect that, like myself, you are here on sufferance."
"Mrs. Smithson is a very old friend."
"And my husband has written a pamphlet on the corn-laws. As for myself, I neither read nor write; but I know something of most of the authors here, and their works. Knowledge is much like dust—it sticks to one, one does not know how."
Emily thanked Mrs. Sullivan (for such was her name), and drew closer to her side, with that sense of loneliness which is never felt so strongly as in a crowd. For some time she listened to every word she could catch, till at length the disagreeable conviction was forced upon her, that clever people talked very much as others did. Why, she actually heard two or three speaking of the weather. Now, to think of a genius only saying, "What a cold day we have had!"
"Whence do you come?" asked Mrs. Sullivan, of a young man who looked at least intelligent.
"I have been spending the day at Hampstead, and beautiful it was: the fog, which, as Wordsworth says of sleep,
