“She has been abroad for some time, and—”
“And she has done with little people like us,” said the doctor, drawing himself up to his full height, and looking as if he did not feel himself to be little at all. “I force my acquaintance on no one, and would not give one flower from my garden for the cards of all the peerage.”
Cecilia felt the conversation unpleasant, and did not care to keep it up. She bent down, and picked up one by one the scraps of pink paper which she had scattered. Something like a sigh escaped from her lips.
Dr. Bardon was the first to speak.
“I saw Augustine Aumerle yesterday at church; I suppose he’s on a visit to his brother the vicar.”
“How very, very handsome he is!” remarked Cecilia.
“You women are such fools,” said the doctor, “you think of nothing but looks.”
“But he’s so clever too, so wonderfully clever! They say he carried off all the honours at Cambridge.”
“Much good they will do him,” growled the doctor, throwing himself down on his chair; “I got honours too when I was at college, and I might better have been sowing turnips for any advantage I’ve had out of them. It’s the fool that gets on in the world!”
This, by the way, was a favourite axiom of Bardon’s, first adopted at the suggestion of Pride, as being highly consolatory to one who had never managed to get on in the world.