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"I knew a widow very poor, Who" At this point, drawn by an irresistible impulse, his eyes sought the level of the audience. Ah, fatal blunder! He stammered, but with an effort raised his eyes and began again: "I knew a widow very poor, Who four" Again his treacherous eyes fell, and his little remaining self-possession utterly forsook him. He made one more despairing effort:
"I alone am left you," said my visitor, putting his hat on a chair, and slowly pulling off his gloves, finger by finger. He had slender, white hands, like a woman's, and they were always in motion. After he had thrown his gloves into his hat, he put his finger against his cheek, leaned his elbow on the arm of his chair, crossed his legs, and looked at me with a cunning self-possession.
Although wholly untrained as an orator, he excited the admiration of learned advocates by the natural flow and the striking self-possession of his address.
He felt himself inexorably condemned, tacitly compelled to pronounce his decision then and there. He tried to struggle, to reason, to recover his self-possession; but the very effort was fatal. He felt a sort of inward syncope, as though, while his body was still upright, his soul was fainting within him with fatigue and terror. "But this is madness!" he cried. "Madness!"
We cannot doubt that the excited stream of talk which sometimes flowed from him was, in the given conditions of mind and imagination, due to a nervous impulse which he could not always restrain; and that the effusiveness of manner with which he greeted alike old friends and new, arose also from a momentary want of self-possession.
The woman was panting a little by this time, for her thoughts were of Durkin and his danger, as much as of herself. She struggled desperately to regain her self-possession, for there was no mistaking the quiet but grim determination written on the Russian's pallid face. And she knew he was not alone in whatever plot he had laid.
After some minutes had flown, however, she gather'd sufficient self-possession to speak to her son in a soothing tone, endeavoring to win him from his sorrows and cheer up his heart.
Whence this solitary stranger could have come from we could not divine. No other natives approached to look after him, nor did he shew anxiety for any absent companion. His composure and apparent self-possession were very remarkable, for he neither exhibited astonishment or curiosity at the novelties by which he was surrounded.
"Thought you were at the capital," said the judge, reclaiming some of his self-possession. "Good many folks thought so," answered Jethro, "g-good many folks." There was no conceivable answer to this, so the judge sat down with an affectation of ease. He was a man on whom dignity lay heavily, and was not a little ruffled because Wetherell had been a witness of his discomfiture.
When he rose to a more elevated station, and associated with men of the highest position and influence in Britain, he took his place amongst them with perfect self-possession. They wondered at the quiet ease and simple dignity of his deportment; and men in the best ranks of life have said of him that “He was one of Nature’s gentlemen.”
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