wait. After you have said so much, and said it so beautifully, I would
rather still talk with you as a friend. Of friends you and I have not
many; those who make up our world, for the most part, we have to keep at a
distance. But while I have many near relatives, children and descendants,
I remember that you have none. So your case is the harder.

LORD B. Ah, no, Madam, indeed! I have my children--descendants who will
live after me, I trust--in those policies which, for the welfare of my
beloved country, I confide to the care of a Sovereign whom I revere and
love....I am not unhappy in my life, Madam; far less in my fortune; only,
as age creeps on, I find myself so lonely, so solitary, that sometimes I
have doubt whether I am really alive, or whether the voice, with which now
and then I seek to reassure myself, be not the voice of a dead man.

QUEEN (_almost tearfully_). No, no, my dear Lord Beaconsfield, you
mustn't say that!

LORD B.(_gallantly_). I won't say anything, Madam, that you forbid,
or that you dislike. You invited me to speak to you as a friend; so I have
done, so I do. I apologise that I have allowed sadness, even for a moment,
to trouble the harmony-the sweetness--of our conversation.

QUEEN. Pray, do not apologise! It has been a very great privilege; I beg
that you will go on! Tell me--you spoke of bereavement--I wish you would
tell me more--about your wife.

(_The sudden request touches some latent chord; and it is with genuine
emotion that he answers_.)

LORD B. Ah! My wife! To her I owed everything.