human
Nil admirari? Oh no. I enjoy life, but then it is thanks to the clubs, my yacht, my cigar-case, my stud, a thousand things,--not thanks at all to Belgravia.
gpt
Complimentary to the Belgraviennes! cried Flora, with a shrug of her shoulders.
human
They have not known how to amuse you, then?
gpt
Ladies never _do_ amuse us! sighed Carruthers.
human
Are you going to Lady Patchouli's this evening?
gpt
I believe we are. I think Lady Marabout said so.
human
Then I shall exert myself, and go too. It will be a terrible bore--balls always are. But to waltz with _you_ I will try to encounter it!
gpt
Lord Goodwood, do not be so sure that I shall waltz at all with you. If _you_ take vanity for wit, _I_ cannot accept discourtesy as compliment!
human
Well hit, little lady!
gpt
What a speech!
human
You got it for once, Goodwood, laughed Carruthers, as they drove away in his tilbury.
gpt
You never had such a sharp brush as that.
human
By Jove, no! Positively it was quite a new sensation--refreshing, indeed! One grows so tired of the women who agree with one eternally. She's charming, on my word. Who _is_ she, Phil? In an heraldic sense, I mean.
gpt
My dear child, what could possess you to answer Lord Goodwood like that?
human
Possess me? The Demon of Mischief, I suppose.
gpt
But, my love, it was a wonderful compliment from him!
human
Was it? I do not see any compliment in those vain, impertinent, Brummelian amour-propreisms. I must coin the word, there is no good one to express it.
gpt
But, my dear Flora, you know he is the Marquis of Goodwood, the Duke of Doncaster's son! It is not as if he were a boy in the Lancers, or an unfledged _petit maître_ from the Foreign Office----
human
Were he her Majesty's son, he should not gratify his vanity at my expense! If he expected me to be flattered by his condescension, he mistook me very much. He has been allowed to adopt that tone, I suppose; but from a man to a woman a chivalrous courtesy is due, though the man be an emperor.
gpt
Perhaps so--of course; but that _is_ their tone nowadays, my love, and you cannot alter it. I always say the Regency-men inaugurated it, and their sons and grandsons out-Herod Herod. But to turn a tide, or be a wit with impunity, a woman wants to occupy a prominent and unassailable position. Were you the Duchess of Amandine, you might say that sort of thing, but a young girl just out _must not_--indeed she must not! The Hauttons heard you, and the Hauttons are very merciless people; perfectly bred themselves, and pitiless on the least infringement of the convenances. Besides, ten to one you may have gained Goodwood's ill-will; and he is a man whose word has immense weight, I assure you.
human
I do not see anything remarkable in him to give him weight, said the literal and unimpressible little Montolieu.
gpt
He is a commonplace person to my taste, neither so brilliant nor so handsome by a great deal as many gentlemen I see--as Sir Philip, for instance, Lady Marabout?
human
An my son? No, my love, he is not; very few men have Philip's talents and person, said Lady Marabout, consciously mollified and propitiated, but going on, nevertheless, with a Spartan impartiality highly laudable
gpt
Goodwood's rank, however, is much higher than Philip's (at least it stands so, though really the Carruthers are by far the older, dating as far back as Ethelbert II., while the Doncaster family are literally unknown till the fourteenth century, when Gervaise d'Ascotte received the acolade before Ascalon from Godfrey de Bouillon); Goodwood _has_ great weight, my dear, in the best circles. A compliment from him is a great compliment to any woman, and the sort of answer you gave him----
human
Must have been a great treat to him, dear Lady Marabout, if every one is in the habit of kow-towing before him. Princes, you know, are never so happy as when they can have a little bit of nature; and my speech must have been as refreshing to Lord Goodwood as the breath of his Bearnese breezes and the freedom of his Pyrenean forests were to Henri Quatre after the court etiquette and the formal ceremonial of Paris.
gpt
I don't know about its being a treat to him, my dear; it was more likely to be a shower-bath. And your illustration isn't to the point. The Bearnese breezes were Henri Quatre's native air, and might be pleasant to him; but the figurative ones are not Goodwood's, and I am sure cannot please him.
human
But, Lady Marabout, I do not want to please him! persisted the young lady, perversely.
gpt
I don't care in the least what he thinks, or what he says of me!
human
Dear me, how oddly things go! thought Lady Marabout.
gpt
There was Valencia, one of the proudest girls in England, his equal in every way, an acknowledged beauty, who would have said the dust on the trottoir was diamonds, and worn turquoises on azureline, or emeralds on rose, I verily believe, if such opticisms and gaucheries had been Goodwood's taste; and here is this child--for whom the utmost one can do will be to secure a younger son out of the Civil Service, or a country member--cannot be made to see that he is of an atom more importance than Soames or Mason, and treats him with downright nonchalant indifference. What odd anomalies one sees in everything!
human
Who _is_ that young lady with you this season? Lady Hautton asked, smiling that acidulated smile with which that amiable saint always puts long questions to you of which she knows the answer would be _peine forte et dure_.
gpt
Not the daughter of that horrid John Montolieu, who did all sorts of dreadful things, and was put into a West India regiment? Indeed! that man? Dear me! Married the sister of your incumbent at Fernditton? Ah, really!--very singular! But how do you come to have brought out the daughter?