Two hundred years ago he might have led some mad Jacobite
plot to success. Three hundred and he might have been another Raleigh.
Six hundred, and there would have been a new crusade. But as it is, he
is out of harmony with his times; life is too easy and mannered; the
field for a man's courage is in petty and recondite things, and Lewie is
not fitted to understand it. And all this, you see, spells a kind of
cowardice: and if you have a friend who is a hero out of joint, a great
man smothered in the wrong sort of civilization, and all the while one
who is building up for himself with the world and in his own heart the
reputation of a coward, you naturally grow hot and bitter."
The lady looked curiously at the speaker. She had never heard the
silent politician speak so earnestly before.
"It seems to me a clear case of _chercher la femme_," said she.
"That," said Wratislaw with emphasis, "is the needle-point of the whole
business. He has fallen in love with just the wrong sort of woman.
Very pretty, very good, a demure puritanical little Pharisee, clever
enough, too, to see Lewie's merits, too weak to hope to remedy them, and
too full of prejudice to accept them. There you have the makings of a
very pretty tragedy."
"I am so sorry," said the lady. She was touched by this man's anxiety
for his friend, and Mr. Lewis Haystoun, whom she was never likely to
meet again, became a figure of interest in her eyes.
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