"Constant. You are an angel of intelligence, and if I have the judgeing of you, I'm afraid you'll be allowed to pass, in spite of the scandal above. Open the door; I don't unbonnet." De Craye threw the door open. Lady Busshe was at that moment saying, "And are we indeed to have you for a neighbour, Dr. Middleton?" The Rev. Doctor's reply was drowned by the new arrivals. "I thought you had forsaken us," observed Sir Willoughby to Mrs. Mountstuart. "And run away with Colonel De Craye? I'm too weighty, my dear friend. Besides, I have not looked at the wedding-presents yet." "The very object of our call!" exclaimed Lady Culmer. "I have to confess I am in dire alarm about mine," Lady Busshe nodded across the table at Clara. "Oh! you may shake your head, but I would rather hear a rough truth than the most complimentary evasion." "How would you define a rough truth, Dr. Middleton?" said Mrs. Mountstuart. Like the trained warrior who is ready at all hours for the trumpet to arms, Dr. Middleton waked up for judicial allocution in a trice. "A rough truth, madam, I should define to be that description of truth which is not imparted to mankind without a powerful impregnation of the roughness of the teller." "It is a rough truth, ma'am, that the world is composed of fools, and that the exceptions are knaves," Professor Crooklyn furnished that example avoided by the Rev. Doctor. "Not to precipitate myself into the jaws of the foregone definition, which strikes me as being as happy as Jonah's whale, that could carry probably the most learned man of his time inside without the necessity of digesting him," said De Craye, "a rough truth is a rather strong charge of universal nature for the firing off of a modicum of personal fact." "It is a rough truth that Plato is Moses atticizing," said Vernon to Dr. Middleton, to keep the diversion alive. "And that Aristotle had the globe under his cranium," rejoined the Rev. Doctor. "And that the Moderns live on the Ancients." "And that not one in ten thousand can refer to the particular treasury he filches." "The Art of our days is a revel of rough truth," remarked Professor Crooklyn. "And the literature has laboriously mastered the adjective, wherever it may be in relation to the noun," Dr. Middleton added. "Orson's first appearance at court was in the figure of a rough truth, causing the Maids of Honour, accustomed to Tapestry Adams, astonishment and terror," said De Craye. That he might not be left out of the sprightly play, Sir Willoughby levelled a lance at the quintain, smiling on Laetitia: "In fine, caricature is rough truth." She said, "Is one end of it, and realistic directness is the other." He bowed. "The palm is yours."