“Which plate is it? It is not very easy, I understand, to procure a perfect copy. One of my uncle’s copies has no two volumes bound alike. Each must have belonged to a different set.”
“I can’t tell you what the plate is. But there are only three of those very curious unfolding ones in my third volume, and there should be four.”
“I do not think so. Indeed, I am sure you are wrong.”
“I am glad to hear it—though to be glad that the world does not possess what I thought I only was deprived of, is selfishness, cover it over as one may with the fiction of a perfect copy.”
“I don’t know,” she returned, without any response to what I said. “I should always like things perfect myself.”
“Doubtless,” I answered; and thought it better to try another direction.
“How is Mrs Oldcastle?” I asked, feeling in its turn the reproach of hypocrisy; for though I could have suffered, I hope, in my person and goods and reputation, to make that woman other than she was, I could not say that I cared one atom whether she was in health or not. Possibly I should have preferred the latter member of the alternative; for the suffering of the lower nature is as a fire that drives the higher nature upwards. So I felt rather hypocritical when I asked Miss Oldcastle after her.
“Quite well, thank you,” she answered, in a tone of indifference, which implied either that she saw through me, or shared in my indifference. I could not tell which.
“And how is Miss Judy?” I inquired.
“A little savage, as usual.”