Push enquiries." I did laugh, I'm sure, as I remembered this to be
the mystic scroll I had scarcely allowed poor Mr. Morrow to point
his umbrella at. Fool that I had been: the thirty-seven
influential journals wouldn't have destroyed it, they'd only have
printed it. Of course I said nothing to Paraday.
When the nurse arrived she turned me out of the room, on which I
went downstairs. I should premise that at breakfast the news that
our brilliant friend was doing well excited universal complacency,
and the Princess graciously remarked that he was only to be
commiserated for missing the society of Miss Collop. Mrs. Wimbush,
whose social gift never shone brighter than in the dry decorum with
which she accepted this fizzle in her fireworks, mentioned to me
that Guy Walsingham had made a very favourable impression on her
Imperial Highness. Indeed I think every one did so, and that, like
the money-market or the national honour, her Imperial Highness was
constitutionally sensitive. There was a certain gladness, a
perceptible bustle in the air, however, which I thought slightly
anomalous in a house where a great author lay critically ill. "Le
roy est mort--vive le roy": I was reminded that another great
author had already stepped into his shoes.
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