“That is being too good indeed,” said Lady Davenant. “Well, now to the point.” “You were very unjust to me, Lady Davenant, yesterday, and unkind.” “Unkind is a woman’s word; but go on.” “Surely man may mark ‘unkindness’ altered eye’ as well as woman,” said Beauclerc; “and from a woman and a friend he may and must feel it, or he is more or less than man.” “Now what can you have to say, Granville, that will not be anticlimax to this exordium?” “I will say no more if you talk of exordiums and anti-climaxes,” cried he. “You accused me yesterday of affectation--twice, when I was no more affected than you are.” “Oh! is that my crime? Is that, what has hurt you so dreadfully? Here is the thorn that has gone in so deep! I am afraid that, as is usual, the accusation hurt the more because it was----” “Do not say ‘true,’” interrupted Beauclerc, “for you really cannot believe it, Lady Davenant. You know me, and all my faults, and I have plenty; but you need not accuse me of one that I have not, and which from the bottom of my soul I despise. Whatever are my faults, they are at least real, and my own.” “You may allow him that,” said Helen. “Well I will--I do,” said Lady Davenant; “to appease you, poor injured innocence; though anyone in the world might think you affected at this moment. Yet I, who know you, know that it is pure real folly. Yes, yes, I acquit you of affectation.” Beauclerc’s face instantly cleared up. “But you said two thorns had gone into your mind--one is out, now for the other.” “I do not feel that other, now,” said Beauclerc, “it was only a mistake. When I began with ‘No man,’ I was not going to say, ‘No man is a hero to his valet de chambre.’ If I had been allowed to finish my sentence, it would have saved a great deal of trouble, I was going to say that no man admires excellence more fervently than I do, and that my very reason for wishing not to see celebrated people is, lest the illusion should be dispelled. “No description ever gives us an exact idea of any person, so that when any one has been much described and talked of, before we see them we form in our mind’s eye some image, some notion of our own, which always proves to be unlike the reality; and when we do afterwards see it, even if it be fairer or better than our imagination, still at first there is a sort of disappointment, from the non-agreement with our previously formed conception. Every body is disappointed the first time they see Hamlet, or Falstaff, as I think Dugald Stewart observes.” “True; and I remember,” said Lady Davenant, “Madame de la Rochejaquelin once said to me, ‘I hate that people should come to see me. I know it destroys the illusion.’” “Yes,” cried Beauclerc; “how much I dread to destroy any of those blessed illusions, which make the real happiness of life. Let me preserve the objects of my idolatry; I would not approach too near the shrine; I fear too much light. I would not know that they were false!”