“My dear doctor” said Lady Cecilia, “only we all thought you were gone—that’s all.”
“And I am not gone, that’s all. I stayed to write a letter, and am come here to look for—but I cannot find-my—”
“Your gloves, perhaps, doctor, you are looking for,” said Churchill, going forward, and with an air of the greatest respect and consideration, both for the gloves and for their owner, he presented them; then shook the doctor by the hand, with a cordiality which the good soul thought truly English, and, bowing him out, added, “How proud he had been to make his acquaintance,—au revoir, he hoped, in Park Lane.”
“Oh you treacherous—!” cried Lady Cecilia, turning to Horace, as soon as the unsuspecting philosopher was fairly gone. “Too bad really! If he were not the most simple-minded creature extant, he must have seen, suspected, something from your look; and what would have become of you if the doctor had come in one moment sooner, and had heard you—I was really frightened.”
“Frightened! so was I, almost out of my wits,” said Churchill. “Les revenans always frighten one; and they never hear any good of themselves, for which reason I make it a principle, when once I have left a room, full of friends especially, never—never to go back. My gloves, my hat, my coat, I’d leave, sooner than lose my friends. Once I heard it said, by one who knew the world and human nature better than any of us—once I heard it said in jest, but in sober earnest I say, that I would not for more than I am worth be placed, without his knowing it, within earshot of my best friend.”
“What sort of a best friend can yours he?” cried Beauclerc.
“Much like other people’s, I suppose,” replied Horace, speaking with perfect nonchalance—“much like other people’s best friends. Whosoever expects to find better, I guess, will find worse, if he live in the world we live in.”
“May I go out of the world before I believe or suspect any such thing?” cried Beauclerc. “Rather than have the Roman curse light upon me, ‘May you survive all your friends and relations!’ may I die a thousand times!”
“Who talks of dying, in a voice so sweet—a voice so loud?” said provoking Horace, in his calm, well-bred tone; “for my part, I who have the honour of speaking to you, can boast, that never since I was of years of discretion (counting new style, beginning at thirteen, of course)—never have I lost a friend, a sincere friend—never, for this irrefragable reason—since that nonage, never was I such a neophyte as to fancy I had found that lusus natures, a friend perfectly sincere.”
“How I pity you!” cried Beauclerc, “if you are in earnest; but in earnest you can’t be.”