“Yes, _intacte_--untouched--above the breath of slander,” cried Lady Cecilia. “I know it: so I say,” replied Churchill: “fidelity that has stood all temptations--to which it has ever been exposed; and her husband is----” “A near relation of mine,” said Lady Cecilia. “I am not prudish as to scandal in general,” continued she, laughing; “‘a chicken, too, might do me good,’ but then the fox must not prey at home. No one ought to stand by and hear their own relations abused.” “A thousand pardons! I depended too much on the general maxim--that the nearer the bone the sweeter the slander.” “Nonsense!” said Lady Cecilia. “I meant to say, the nearer the heart the dearer the blame. A cut against a first cousin may go wrong--but a bosom friend--oh! how I have succeeded against best friends; scolded all the while, of course, and called a monster. But there is Sir Stephen bowing to you.” Then, as Lady Cecilia kissed her hand to him from the window, Churchill went on: “By the by, without any scandal, seriously I heard something--I was quite concerned--that he had been of late less in his study and more in the boudoir of ------. Surely it cannot be true!” “Positively false,” said Lady Cecilia. “At every breath a reputation dies,” said Beauclerc. “‘Pon my soul, that’s true!” said the aide-de-camp. “Positively, hit or miss, Horace has been going on, firing away with his wit, pop, pop, pop! till he has bagged--how many brace?” Horace turned away from him contemptuously, and looked to see whereabouts Lady Davenant might be all this time. CHAPTER XIV. Lady Davenant was at the far end of the room engrossed, Churchill feared, by the newspaper; as he approached she laid it down, and said,-- “How scandalous some of these papers have become, but it is the fault of the taste of the age. ‘Those who live to please, must please to live.’” Horace was not sure whether he was cut or not, but he had the presence of mind not to look hurt. He drew nearer to Lady Davenant, seated himself, and taking up a book as if he was tired of folly, to which he had merely condescended, he sat and read, and then sat and thought, the book hanging from his hand. The result of these profound thoughts he gave to the public, not to the aide-de-camp; no more of the little pop-gun pellets of wits--but now was brought out reason and philosophy. In a higher tone he now reviewed the literary, philosophical, and political world, with touches of La Bruyere and Rochefoucault in the characters he drew and in the reflections he made; with an air, too, of sentimental contrition for his own penetration and fine moral sense, which compelled him to see and to be annoyed by the faults of such superior men.