'Surely,' I said, 'surely you are
not Cyril Aylwin, the------?'
'Pray finish your sentence, sir, and say the low bohemian painter,
the representative of the great ungenteel--the successor to the
Aylwin peerage.'
The other painter, looking in blank amazement at my newly-found
kinsman's extraordinary merriment, exclaimed, 'Bless me! Then you
really can laugh aloud, Mr. Cyril. What has happened? What can have
happened to make my dear friend laugh aloud?'
'Well he may ask,' said Cyril, turning to me. 'He knows that ever
since I was a boy in jackets I have despised the man who, in a world
where all is so comic, could select any particular point of the farce
for his empty guffaw. But I am conquered at last. Let me introduce
you, Wilderspin, to my kinsman, Henry Aylwin of Raxton Hall, alias
Lord Henry Lovell of Little Egypt--one of Duke Panuel's interesting
twinses.'
But Wilderspin's astonishment, apparently, was not at the
_rencontre_: it was at the spectacle of his companion's hilarity.
'Wonderful!' he murmured, with his eyes still fastened upon Cyril.
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