“Male gossip!—‘Tombe sur moi le ciel!’” cried Churchill.
“‘Pourvu que je me venge,’ always understood,” pursued Lady Davenant; “but why be so afraid of the imputation of gossiping, Mr. Churchill? It is quite fashionable, and if so, quite respectable, you know, and in your style quite grand.
“And gossiping wonders at being so fine—
“Malice, to be hated, needs but to be seen, but now when it is elegantly dressed we look upon it without shame or consciousness of evil; we grow to doat upon it—so entertaining, so graceful, so refined. When vice loses half its grossness, it loses all its deformity. Humanity used to be talked of when our friends were torn to pieces, but now there is such a philosophical perfume thrown over the whole operation, that we are irresistibly attracted. How much we owe to such men as Mr. Churchill, who make us feel detraction virtue!”
He bowed low as Lady Davenant, summoned by her lord, left the room, and there he stood as one condemned but not penitent.
“If I have not been well sentenced,” said he, as the door closed, “and made ‘to feel detraction virtue!’—But since Lady Cecilia cannot help smiling at that, I am acquitted, and encouraged to sin again the first opportunity. But Lady Davenant shall not be by, nor Lord Davenant either.”
Lady Cecilia sat down to write a note, and Mr. Churchill walked round the room in a course of critical observation on the pictures, of which, as of every thing else, he was a supreme judge. At last he put his eye and his glass down to something which singularly attracted his attention on one of the marble tables.
“Pretty!” said Lady Cecilia, “pretty are not they?—though one’s so tired of them every where now—those doves!”
“Doves!” said Churchill, “what I am admiring are gloves, are not they, Miss Stanley?” said he, pointing to an old pair of gloves, which, much wrinkled and squeezed together, lay on the beautiful marble in rather an unsightly lump.
“Poor Doctor V———,” cried Helen to Cecilia; “that poor Doctor V———-is as absent as ever! he is gone, and has forgotten his gloves!”