“Can’t you stop just a minute?”
“I’m afraid I can’t. Good morning.”
It was incredible; but this old friend, the simplest heart alive, retreated without a touch of his hand, and with a sorely wounded air.
“That newspaper article appears to have been generally read,” Beauchamp said to Lydiard, who answered:
“The article did not put the idea of you into men’s minds, but gave tongue to it: you may take it for an instance of the sagacity of the Press.”
“You wouldn’t take that man and me to have been messmates for years! Old Jack Wilmore! Don’t go, Lydiard.”
Lydiard declared that he was bound to go: he was engaged to read Italian for an hour with Mrs. Wardour-Devereux.
“Then go, by all means,” Beauchamp dismissed him.
He felt as if he had held a review of his friends and enemies on the door-step, and found them of one colour. If it was an accident befalling him in a London square during a space of a quarter of an hour, what of the sentiments of universal England? Lady Barbara’s elopement with Lord Alfred last year did not rouse much execration; hardly worse than gossip and compassion. Beauchamp drank a great deal of bitterness from his reflections.
They who provoke huge battles, and gain but lame victories over themselves, insensibly harden to the habit of distilling sour thoughts from their mischances and from most occurrences. So does the world they combat win on them.