Love was a poetic impulse, and his own state of feeling with regard to the Baroness was largely characterized by that eminently prosaic sentiment--curiosity.
It was true, as Acton with his quietly cogitative habit observed to himself, that curiosity, pushed to a given point, might become a romantic passion; and he certainly thought enough about this charming woman to make him restless and even a little melancholy.

It puzzled and vexed him at times to feel that he was not more ardent.

He was not in the least bent upon remaining a bachelor.

In his younger years he had been--or he had tried to be--of the opinion that it would be a good deal "jollier" not to marry, and he had flattered himself that his single condition was something of a citadel.

It was a citadel, at all events, of which he had long since leveled the outworks.