Lady Marabout, cursed with that obstinate, ill-bred, unextinguishable weakness for truth incidental and ever fatal to the De Boncoeurs, couldn't say that it was _not_ what she was going to observe to him, but it was exceedingly unpleasant, now it was put in such plain, uncomplimentary terms, to admit to the man's face that she was about to tell him he was a mercenary schemer, whose attentions only sprang from a lawless passion for the _beaux yeux_ of Cecil's _cassette_. She would have told him all that, and much more, with greatest dignity and effect, if he hadn't anticipated her; but to have her weapon parried before it was fairly out of its sheath unnerved her arm at the outset. "What _would_ Anne Hautton do? Dear me! there never was anybody perpetually placed in such wretched positions as I am!" thought Lady Marabout, as she played with her parasol, and murmured something not very clear relative to "responsibility" and "not desirable," two words as infallibly a part of Lady Marabout's stock in trade as a sneer at the "swells" is of _Punch's_. How she sighed for some cold, nonchalant, bitter sentence, such as the Hautton répertoire could have supplied! how she scorned herself for her own weakness and lack of severity! But she would not have relished hurting a burglar's feelings, though she had seen him in the very act of stealing her jewel-boxes, by taxing him with the theft; and though the Ogre _must_ be crushed, the crushing began to give Lady Marabout neuralgic twinges. She was no more able to say the stern things she had rehearsed and resolved upon, than she was able to stab him with her parasol, or strangle him with her handkerchief. "I guessed rightly what you were about to say to me?" said Cheveley, who seemed somehow or other to have taken all the talk into his own hands, and to have become the master of the position. "I thought so. I do not wonder at your construction; I cannot blame you for your resolution. Lady Cecil has some considerable fortune, they say; it is very natural that you should have imagined a man like myself, with no wealth save a good name, which only serves to make lack of wealth more conspicuous, incapable of seeking her society for any better, higher, more disinterested motive than that of her money; it was not charitable, perhaps, to decide unhesitatingly that it was impossible I could be drawn to her by any other attraction, that it was imperative I must be dead to everything in her that gives her a nobler and a higher charm; but it was very natural, and one learns never to hope for the miracle of a charitable judgment, _even_ from Lady Marabout!"