El.  Oh, how heartlessly you talk!  What do I care what the lawyers say?  Can’t you see how miserable I am, and how hollow everything seems all at once?  I don’t believe in any one, and I don’t feel as if I knew anything, except that love is an inexplicable phenomenon of matter.  I shall become an agnostic.

Re-enter Lord and Lady Gules.

Lord G.  Well, have you two young people come to an understanding?  Take my word for it, Elaine, an ounce of practice is worth a pound of theory in love-affairs, and be thankful if the man is willing to become your husband, who has had sufficient common-sense to teach you the lesson.  Holloa! whom have we here?

Enter Charles with cards.

Lord G. [reads].  “Dr and Mrs Plumper and Mr Flamm, to inquire for Lady Elaine Bendore.”  Oho! our friend Plumper seems to know the difference between theory and practice at any rate, and is evidently anxious to extend the latter. [To Charles.] Show them up.

Ad.  I called upon the Plumpers this morning, and explained the whole affair to the entire satisfaction of the worthy couple.

[Adolphus and Lady Elaine whisper apart.

Lord G.  I have to thank you, Dr Plumper, for the timely assistance you rendered my daughter—­first, in nearly sending her into a fit, and then in bringing her out of it; and am glad of this opportunity of expressing my sense of the obligation I am under to Mrs Plumper and Mr Flamm.

Dr P.  Oh, don’t mention it, my lord; I am sure I was only too gug-gug-glad to be of any assistance to Mr Gresham by being so like him as to frighten the young lady into a fif-fif-fit.  And as for bringing her to—­I always take the sal-volatile in my pup-pup-pup-pocket on Mrs Plumper’s account.

Ad.  And you’ll accept me, Elaine, as your husband, even though I don’t abandon my political aspirations, or introduce aesthetic principles into Kindergartens, or adopt the philosophy of Comte?

El. [giving him her hand].  Oh, Adolphus, you have convinced me that the loftiest of all aspirations, the purest of all principles, the supremest of all philosophies, is—­

Ad.  A-dod-dod-dolphus!

Footnotes: 

{81} Esoteric Buddhism.  By A. P. Sinnett, President of the Simla Eclectic Theosophical Society.

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