‘And to think you should all know my friend Armine so well! I was astonished, for he will never go anywhere, or speak to anyone.’
‘You know him intimately?’ said Miss Temple.
‘He is my brother! There is not a human being in the world I love so much! If you only knew him as I know him. Ah! chère Miss Temple, there is not a man in London to be compared with him, so clever and so good! What a heart! so tender! and what talent! There is no one so spirituel.’
‘You have known him long, Count?’
‘Always; but of late I find a great change in him. I cannot discover what is the matter with him. He has grown melancholy. I think he will not live.’
‘Indeed!’
‘No, I am never wrong. That cher Armine will not live.’
‘You are his friend, surely———’
‘Ah! yes; but I do not know what it is. Even me he cares not for. I contrive sometimes to get him about a little; yesterday, for instance; but to-day, you see, he will not move. There he is, sitting alone, in a dull hotel, with his eyes fixed on the ground, dark as night. Never was a man so changed. I suppose something has happened to him abroad. When you first knew him, I daresay now, he was the gayest of the gay?’
‘He was indeed very different,’ said Miss Temple, turning away her face.