human
Marked?
gpt
Yes, marked! Why do you repeat it in that tone? If they _were_ marked, there is nothing to be ridiculed that I see. They were very marked, indeed, especially for him; he's such an unimpressible, never-show-anything man. I wonder you did not notice it!
human
My dear mother! said Carruthers, a little impatiently, brushing up the Angora cat's ruff the wrong way with his cane,
gpt
Well--don't be impatient. You never used to be, said Lady Marabout.
human
If you were in my place just for a night or two, or any other chaperone's, you'd be more full of pity. But people never _will_ sympathize with anything that doesn't touch themselves. The only chords that strike the key-note in anybody is the chord that sounds 'self;' and that is the reason why the world is as full of crash and tumult as Beethoven's 'Storm.'
gpt
Quite right, my dear mother!
human
Of course it's quite right. I always think you have a great deal of sympathy for a man, Philip, even for people you don't harmonize with--(you could sympathize with that child Flora, yesterday, in her rapturous delight at seeing that Coccoloba Uvifera in the Patchouli conservatory, because it reminded her of her West Indian home, and you care nothing whatever about flowers, nor yet about the West Indies, I should suppose)--but you never will sympathize with me. You know how many disappointments and grievances and vexations of every kind I have had the last ten, twenty, ay, thirty, forty seasons--ever since I had to chaperone your aunt Eleanore, almost as soon as I was married, and was worried, more than anybody ever _was_ worried, by her coquetteries and her inconsistencies and her vacillations--so badly as she married, too, at the last! Those flirting beauties so often do; they throw away a hundred admirable chances and put up with a wretched _dernier resort_;--let a thousand salmon break away from the line out of their carelessness, and end by being glad to land a little minnow. I don't know when I _haven't_ been worried by chaperoning. Flora Montolieu is a great anxiety, a great difficulty, little detrimental that she is!
gpt
Detrimental! What an odd word you choose for her.
human
I don't choose it for her; she _is_ it,
gpt
How so?
human
How so! Why, my dear Philip, I told you the very first day she came. How so! when she is John Montolieu's daughter, when she has no birth to speak of, and not a farthing to her fortune.
gpt
If she were Jack Ketch's daughter, you could not speak much worse. Her high-breeding might do credit to a Palace; I only wish one found it in all Palaces! and I never knew you before measure people by their money.
human
My dear Philip, no more I do. I can't bear you when you speak in that tone; it's so hard and sarcastic, and unlike you. _I_ don't know what you mean either. I should have thought a man of the world like yourself knew well enough what I intend when I say Flora is a detrimental. She has a sweet temper, very clever, very lively, very charming, as any one knows by the number of men that crowd about her, but a detrimental she is----
gpt
Poor little heart!