Well, the world brooks no heroics now; there are reserves. Men cultivate a thick skin—nature's buff-coat—in which, with little pain and small loss of blood, the modern man-at-arms rides cheerily through life's battle. When point or edge happen to go a little through, as I have said, there are reserves. There is no good in roaring, grinning, or cursing. The scathless only laugh at you; therefore wipe away the blood quietly and seem all you can like the rest. Better not to let them see even that. Is there not sometimes more of curiosity than of sympathy in the scrutiny? Don't you even see, at times, just the suspicion of a smile on your friend's pitying face, as he prescribes wet brown paper or basilicon, or a cob-web, according to his skill?
So Tom and Cleve talked a little—an acquaintance would have said, just as usual—and exchanged newspapers, and even laughed a little now and then; but when at Shillingsworth the last interloper got out, and Tom and Cleve were left to themselves, the ruling idea asserted itself, and Sedley looked hurriedly out of the window, and grew silent for a time, and pretended not to hear Cleve when he asked him whether he had seen the report of Lord Verney's visit to Cardyllian, as displayed in the county paper of that day, which served to amuse him extremely.
"I don't think," said Tom Sedley, at last, abruptly, "that nice, pretty little creature, Agnes Etherage—the nicest little thing, by Jove, I think I ever saw—I say she is not looking well."
"Is not she really?" said Cleve, very coolly cutting open a leaf in his magazine.
"Didn't you observe?" exclaimed Tom, rather fiercely.
"Well, no, I can't say I did; but you know them so much better than I," answered Cleve; "it can't be very much; I dare say she's well by this time."
"How can you speak that way, Verney, knowing all you do?"
"Why, what do I know?" exclaimed Cleve, looking up in unaffected wonder.
"You know all about it—why she's out of spirits, why she's looking so delicate, why she's not like herself," said Tom, impatiently.
"Upon my soul I do not," said Cleve Verney, with animation.