FLEEMING'S ENGAGEMENT 77 



and it seems it was some time before Fleeming began Fieeming's 

 to know his mind ; and yet longer ere he ventured ment. 

 to show it. The corrected quantity, to those who 

 knew him well, will seem to have played its part ; 

 he was the man always to reflect over a correction 

 and to admire the castigator. And fall in love he 

 did ; not hurriedly but step by step, not blindly 

 but with critical discrimination ; not in the fashion 

 of Romeo, but before he was done, with all Romeo's 

 ardour and more than Romeo's faith. The high 

 favour to which he presently rose in the esteem of 

 Alfred Austin and his wife, might well give him 

 ambitious notions ; but the poverty of the present 

 and the obscurity of the future were there to give 

 him pause ; and when his aspirations began to 

 settle round Miss Austin, he tasted, perhaps for 

 the only time in his life, the pangs of diffidence. 

 There was indeed opening before him a wide door 

 of hope. He had changed into the service of Messrs. 

 Liddell & Gordon; these gentlemen had begun 

 to dabble in the new field of marine telegraphy ; and 

 Fleeming was already face to face with his life's 

 work. That impotent sense of his own value, as of 

 a ship aground, which makes one of the agonies 

 of youth, began to fall from him. New problems 

 which he was endowed to solve, vistas of new in- 

 quiry which he was fitted to explore, opened before 

 him continually. His gifts had found their avenue 

 and goal. And with this pleasure of effective 



