“There, Smart,” said the reader of the above paragraph, “you have lost your chance for ever. What a pity it is you did not make a better use of your time. By the way, do you know any thing of the Hon. Philip Martindale?”
“I know nothing about him, except that I have been told he is one of the proudest men that ever lived; and I can never suppose that he would condescend to marry the daughter of a soap-boiler.”
“There is no answering for that,” responded the other; “necessity has no law. Brigland Abbey cannot be kept up for a trifle; and if I am not misinformed, this same Philip Martindale has been rather hard run on settling-days.”
At hearing this conversation, the young gentleman was greatly annoyed; and in order to avoid any farther intelligence concerning himself, he took his departure, for the hour appointed for meeting his friend Stephen was now very near at hand. He was in very ill-humour with what he had heard, and was quite shocked at the liberties which common people took with the names and affairs of persons of rank. He had composed in his own mind, and was uttering with his mind’s voice, a most eloquent philippic against the daring insolence of plebeian animals, who presumed to canvass the conduct of their superiors; and he was dwelling upon the enviable privacy of more humble life, which was not so watched and advertised in all its movements, till it occurred to him that this publicity was one of the distinctions of high life, and that even calumnious reports concerning the great were but a manifestation of the interest which the world took in their movements. It also came into his mind that many of those actions which seem otherwise unaccountable and ridiculous, owe their being to a love of notoriety; and he thought it not unlikely that some of the great might play fools’ tricks for the sake of being talked of by the little. So his anger abated, and he more than forgave the impertinent one who had made free with his name in a newspaper.
It has been said that we live in a strange world. We deny this position altogether. Nothing is less strange than this world and its contents. But if we will voluntarily and wilfully keep our eyes closed, and form an imaginary world of our own, and only occasionally awake and take a transient glance of reality, and then go back to our dreamings, the world may well enough be strange to us.
CHAPTER VII.
“How durst you come into this room and company without leave?”
Killegrew.