“I do not wonder that any one who does not know Doctor V------ should be surprised by his great humility,” added Helen. “You are sure that it is not pride that apes humility?” asked Churchill. “Yes, quite sure!” “Yet--” said Churchill (putting his malicious finger through a great hole in the thumb of the doctor’s glove) “I should have fancied that I saw vanity through the holes in these gloves, as through the philosopher’s cloak of old.” “Horace is a famous fellow for picking holes and making much of them, Miss Stanley, you see,” said the aide-de-camp. “Vanity! Doctor V----has no vanity!” said Helen, “if you knew him.” “No vanity! Whom does Miss Stanley mean?” cried the aide-de-camp. “No vanity? that’s good. Who? Horace?” “_Mauvais plaisant_!” Horace put him by, and, happily not easily put out of countenance, he continued to Helen,-- “You give the good doctor credit, too, for all his _naïveté_?” said Churchill. “He does not want credit for it,” said Helen, “he really has it.” “I wish I could see things as you do, Miss Stanley.” “Show him that, Helen,” cried Lady Cecilia, looking at a table beside them, on which lay one of those dioramic prints which appear all a confusion of lines till you look at them in their right point of view. “Show him that--it all depends, and so does seeing characters, on getting the right point of view.” “Ingenious!” said Churchill, trying to catch the right position; “but I can’t, I own--” then abruptly resuming, “Navïeté charms me at fifteen,” and his eye glanced at Helen, then was retracted, then returning to his point of view, “at eighteen perhaps may do,” and his eyes again turned to Helen, “at eighteen--it captivates me quite,” and his eye dwelt. “But naïveté at past fifty, verging to sixty, is quite another thing, really rather too much for me. I like all things in season, and above all, simplicity will not bear long keeping. I have the greatest respect possible for our learned and excellent friend, but I wish this could be any way suggested to him, and that he would lay aside this out-of-season simplicity.” “He cannot lay aside his nature,” said Helen, “and I am glad of it, it is such a good nature.” “Kind-hearted creature he is, I never heard him say a severe word of any one,” said Lady Cecilia. “What a sweet man he must he!” said Horace, making a face at which none present, not even Helen, could forbear to smile. “His heart, I am sure, is in the right place always. I only wish one could say the same of his wig. And would it be amiss if he sometimes (I would not be too hard upon him, Miss Stanley), once a fortnight, suppose--brushed, or caused to be brushed, that coat of his?” “You have dusted his jacket for him famously, Horace, I think,” said the aide-de-camp. At this instant the door opened, and in came the doctor himself. Lady Cecilia’s hand was outstretched with her note, thinking, as the door opened, that she should see the servant come in, for whom she had rung.