Still every girl likes to be admired, and Miss Grove liked her cousin's admiration none the less because his sister entreated her so prettily to accept it responsively. There was no reason why she should disappoint the brother and sister with a promptitude, that would put a premature period to an agreeable holiday. The obvious wishes of the elders of both families may also have disposed the young lady to temporize. That the elders of the family party wished for the match when the Groves went from Field Place to town, may be inferred from the arrangement for the speedy reunion of the young people in Lincoln's Inn Fields. That Bysshe, Mrs. Shelley, and Miss Shelley, followed the five Groves to London so quickly, and spent a month with them under the same roof of Lincoln's Inn Fields, is a significant fact.
In London, as the reader doubtless remembers, the poet had other business to look after besides the pursuit of his cousin's affection. It was needful for him to come to an arrangement with a London publisher respecting those already mentioned fourteen hundred and eighty copies of _Original Poetry_, by Victor and Cazire. Needful, also, was it that he should find a publisher for _St. Irvyne, or The Rosicrucian_, which would soon be ready for the press. The poet's first visit to Mr. John Joseph Stockdale's place of business in Pall Mall was paid whilst he was staying with his mother, and his sister, and Harriett the Enchantress, under his cousin Grove's house, hard by Lincoln's Inn. Since he entered the publisher's office with a countenance eloquent of anxiety, one can imagine the relief it was to Cazire (the sharer of his literary toil and anxiety) to learn from Victor, on his return from Pall Mall, that he thought he saw a way out of the bother with that embarrassing Horsham printer, who wanted his money so much sooner than was reasonable and convenient.
But though she cannot have rated him highly as a partner in the dance, and does not seem at any moment to have thought seriously of taking him for a partner through life, the cousins played together prettily for two summer months. The moonlight walks at Strode and about St. Irving's Hills were followed by no less agreeable visits to the sights of the town. And when Miss Harriett returned to Wiltshire, and the youthful poet went back to Field Place, there was a commencement or renewal (Mr. Charles Henry Grove is uncertain which it was) of their correspondence through the post, that came to an end in, or shortly before, the ensuing Christmas holidays. It is not surprising that spectators of the game, who, of course, could see but little of it, mistook for an engagement what to outsiders seemed so likely to become an engagement, though it never was an affair (if I read the facts aright) that could have ended in marriage.