“Grave support, my Lord! you are mistaken: never apply the epithet grave to anything belonging to Philip Wharton. But, in sober earnest, I have sat long enough with you to terrify all my friends, and must now show my worshipful face in another part of the house. Count Devereux, will you come with me to the Duchess’s?”
“What! the Duchess’s immediately after Lord Bolingbroke’s!—the Whig after the Tory: it would be as trying to one’s assurance as a change from the cold bath to the hot to one’s constitution.”
“Well, and what so delightful as a trial in which one triumphs? and a change in which one does not lose even one’s countenance?”
“Take care, my Lord,” said Bolingbroke, laughing; “those are dangerous sentiments for a man like you, to whom the hopes of two great parties are directed, to express so openly, even on a trifle and in a jest.”
“‘Tis for that reason I utter them. I like being the object of hope and fear to men, since my miserable fortune made me marry at fourteen, and cease to be aught but a wedded thing to the women. But sup with me at the Bedford,—you, my Lord, and the Count.”
“And you will ask Walpole, Addison, and Steele,* to join us, eh?” said Bolingbroke. “No, we have other engagements for to-night; but we shall meet again soon.”
* All political opponents of Lord Bolingbroke.
And the eccentric youth nodded his adieu, disappeared, and a minute afterwards was seated by the side of the Duchess of Marlborough.
“There goes a boy,” said Bolingbroke, “who, at the age of fifteen, has in him the power to be the greatest man of his day, and in all probability will only be the most singular. An obstinate man is sure of doing well; a wavering or a whimsical one (which is the same thing) is as uncertain, even in his elevation, as a shuttlecock. But look to the box at the right: do you see the beautiful Lady Mary?”
“Yes,” said Mr. Trefusis, who was with us, “she has only just come to town. ‘Tis said she and Ned Montagu live like doves.”