A VIRGINIAN. 33 



Lis interest to behave ill. I hate to consort with such 

 a man, even casually." 



" Yet you must do so, or if you do not, you must 

 live in absolute seclusion. You can go no -where with- 

 out meeting him ; and if no one — which I suppose no 

 one does — esteem him au fond very deeply, still he 

 is hand-in-glove with every one ; and there is not a 

 pleasanter house than his in Melton, or in May Fair." 



"All very true, I dare say," replied Fairfax, shrug- 

 ging his shoulders, a la mode de France; "still I 

 don't like it. Four men here I have resolved to avoid 

 as much as I can, in consequence of what I have 

 learned of their characters since I have been in Eng- 

 land ; and though I shall, of course, be civil when I 

 do meet them, I shall avoid meeting them as far as in 

 me lies." 



" And who may be the four ?" 



" Your friend, Lord Cheshire, Henry de R*, Lord 

 Jardinier, and Bellamy. I'll none of them." 



" Pardon me, Colonel Fairfax, if I speak to you 

 plainly ; you know that I cannot mean to offend you, 

 and that I have seen much more of English society than 

 you have. There is nothing which is held in such con- 

 tempt and ridicule here, among the three hundred peo- 

 ple who constitute the worlds as the affecting to be 

 better than your neighbors, to take up the part of the 

 Quixotic reformer, and to attempt to put down things 

 or persons in accordance with your own opinion, and 

 not with the dictates of society. To eschew a man 

 markedly on account of those petty, if paltry, vices, 

 which, though contemptible and odious, do not come 

 fairly before the tribunal of the public, is to attack 

 the public itself; and any attempt at dictation of that 

 kind the public will resent and punish. If you avoid 

 Jardinier and Bellamy, for instance, even to dropping 

 their acquaintance quietly^ that is one thing. The 

 temper of both those men is overbearing and detesta- 

 171 



