Churchill coughed, and shrugged, and sighed, and declared he would be temperate; he would not touch a character, upon his honour; he would only indulge in a few little personalities; it could not hurt any lady’s feelings that he should criticise or praise absent beauties. So he just made a review of all he could recollect, in answer to a question one of the officers, Captain Warmsley, had asked him, and which, in an absent fit, he had had the ill-manners yesterday, as now he recollected, not to answer--Whom he considered as altogether the handsomest woman of his acquaintance? Beauclerc was now in the room, and Horace was proud to display, before him in particular, his infinite knowledge of all the fair and fashionable, and all that might be admitted fashionable without being fair--all that have the _je ne sais quoi_, which is than beauty dearer. As one conscious of his power to consecrate or desecrate, by one look of disdain or one word of praise, he stood; and beginning at the lowest conceivable point, his uttermost notion of want of beauty--his _laid ideal_, naming one whose image, no doubt, every charitable imagination will here supply, Horace next fixed upon another for his mediocrity point--what he should call “just well enough”--_assez bien, assez_--just up to the Bellasis motto, “_Bonne et belle assez_.” Then, in the ascending scale, he rose to those who, in common parlance, may be called charming, fascinating; and still for each he had his fastidious look and depreciating word. Just keeping within the verge, Horace, without exposing himself to the ridicule of coxcombry, ended by sighing for that being ‘made of every creature’s best’--perfect, yet free from the curse of perfection. Then, suddenly turning to Beauclerc, and tapping him on the shoulder--“Do, give us your notions--to what sort of a body or mind, now, would you willingly bend the knee?” Beauclerc could not or would not tell--“I only know that whenever I bend the knee,” said he, “it will be because I cannot help it!” Beauclerc could not be drawn out either by Churchill’s persiflage or flattery, and he tried both, to talk of his tastes or opinions of women. He felt too much perhaps about love to talk much about it. This all agreed well in Helen’s imagination with what Lady Cecilia had told her of his secret engagement. She was sure he was thinking of Lady Blanche, and that he could not venture to describe her, lest he should betray himself and his secret. Then, leaving Churchill and the talkers, he walked up and down the room alone, at the further side, seeming as if he were recollecting some lines which he repeated to himself, and then stopping before Lady Cecilia, repeated to her, in a very low voice, the following:--