Part 16 (1/2)
We may diverge hither or thither, but the golden thread still holds us.
Is fair or dark beauty the fairest? The world cannot decide; but love shall decide in a moment.
A halo surrounds her we love, and makes beautiful to us her movements, her looks, her virtues, her faults, her nonsense, her affectation and herself; and that's love, doctor!
Lord Ipsden was capable of loving like this; but, to do Lady Barbara justice, she had done much to freeze the germ of n.o.ble pa.s.sion; she had not killed, but she had benumbed it.
”Saunders,” said Lord Ipsden, one morning after breakfast, ”have you entered everything in your diary?”
”Yes, my lord.”
”All these good people's misfortunes?”
”Yes, my lord.”
”Do you think you have spelled their names right?”
”Where it was impossible, my lord, I subst.i.tuted an English appellation, hidentical in meaning.”
”Have you entered and described my first interview with Christie Johnstone, and somebody something?”
”Most minutely, my lord.”
”How I turned Mr. Burke into poetry--how she listened with her eyes all glistening--how they made me talk--how she dropped a tear, he! he!
he! at the death of the first baron--how shocked she was at the king striking him when he was dying, to make a knight-banneret of the poor old fellow?”
”Your lords.h.i.+p will find all the particulars exactly related,” said Saunders, with dry pomp.
”How she found out that t.i.tles are but breath--how I answered--some nonsense?”
”Your lords.h.i.+p will find all the topics included.”
”How she took me for a madman? And you for a prig?”
”The latter circ.u.mstance eluded my memory, my lord.”
”But when I told her I must relieve only one poor person by day, she took my hand.”
”Your lords.h.i.+p will find all the items realized in this book, my lord.”
”What a beautiful book!”
”Alba are considerably ameliorated, my lord.”
”Alba?”
”Plural of alb.u.m, my lord,” explained the refined factotum, ”more delicate, I conceive, than the vulgar reading.”
Viscount Ipsden read from