An Exquisite Fool

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Excerpt from An Exquisite Fool: A Novel He had sometimes wondered since whether he had acted wisely. He spent a moment in wondering again to-night, till, looking round on his commodious bach clor apartment fitted to satisfy his own taste, to meet his own idiosyncrasy, he assured himself that his wis dom had been unimpeachable. His present life, with all its drawbacks, suited him as none other could have done, the thought that that charming face and smile might perhaps have been there opposite to him, that a clatter of childish voices might have been awake and alert to greet him in the morning, stirred him to some regret, perhaps, some sense of loss, but to no enthusi asm of desire. Childish voices were delightful, but when they belonged to one's self they meant so much - too much. He turned again to his bundle of letters. They had no bearing, except indirectly, on that lost possibility he had contemplated again just now. They were from a very different person - one who hardly for a moment, even, had touched the sentimental side of his nature, and who, in any case, had been a mar ried woman. The letters, which all dated from fifteen to twenty years back, were signed Helen Bromley (that other friend whom he had met to-night was named Euphemia). They were for the most part very long, and written in a singularly clear and beautiful hand on fine woven paper, stamped with a gold mono gram. Lidderdale glanced over their contents, pres ently he became absorbed in reading them. They were brilliant, clever, entertaining, filled with acute observation of events and books and people, they con tained hardly anything personal beyond references to his own work (he had been a writer in those days. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.