fancy that I had ever seen, but whom I perfectly well knew I had never seen until that hour.
It made me tremble so, to be thrown into this unaccountable agitation, that I was conscious of being distressed even by the observation of the French maid, though I knew she had been looking watchfully here, and there, and everywhere, from the moment of her coming into the church. By degrees, though very slowly, I at last overcame my strange emotion. After a long time, I looked towards Lady Dedlock again. It was while they were preparing to sing, before the sermon. She took no heed of me, and the beating at my heart was gone. Neither did it revive for more than a few moments, when she once or twice afterwards glanced at Ada or at me through her glass.
The service being concluded, Sir Leicester gave his arm with much state and gallantry to Lady Dedlock—though he was obliged to walk by the help of a thick stick—and escorted her out of church to the pony carriage in which they had come. The servants then dispersed, and so did the congregation: whom Sir Leicester had contemplated all along (Mr. Skimpole said to Mr. Boythorn's infinite delight), as if he were a considerable landed proprietor in Heaven.
“He believes he is!” said Mr. Boythorn, “He firmly believes it. So did his father, and his grandfather, and his great-grandfather!”
“Do you know,” pursued Mr. Skimpole, very unexpectedly to Mr. Boythorn, “it's agreeable to me to see a man of that sort.”
“Is it!” said Mr. Boythorn.
“Say that he wants to patronise me,” pursued Mr. Skimpole. “Very well! I don't object.”
“I do,” said Mr. Boythorn, with great vigor.
“Do you really?” returned Mr. Skimpole, in his easy light vein. “But, that's taking trouble, surely. And why should you take trouble? Here am I, content to receive things childishly, as they fall out: and I never take trouble! I come down here, for instance, and I find a mighty potentate, exacting homage. Very well! I say ‘Mighty potentate, here is my homage! It's easier to give it, than to withhold it. Here it is. If you have anything of an agreeable nature to show me, I shall be happy to see it; if you have anything of an agreeable nature to give me, I shall be happy to accept it.’ Mighty potentate replies in effect, ‘This is a sensible fellow. I find him accord with my digestion and my bilious system. He doesn't impose upon me the necessity of rolling myself up like a hedge-hog with my points outward. I expand, I open, I turn my silver lining outward like Milton's cloud, and it's more agreeable to both of us.’ That's my view of such things: speaking as a child!”
“But suppose you went down somewhere else to-morrow,” said Mr. Boythorn, “where there was the opposite of that fellow—or of this fellow. How then?”
“How then?” said Mr. Skinpole, with an appearance of the utmost simplicity and candor. “Just the same, then! I should say, ‘My esteemed Boythorn’—to make you the personification of our imaginary friend—‘my esteemed Boythorn, you object to the mighty potentate? Very good. So do I. I take it that my business in the social system is to be agreeable; I take it that everybody's business in the social system is to be agreeable. It's a system of harmony, in short.
