"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." "But, Lady Marabout, I do not want to please him!" persisted the young lady, perversely. "I don't care in the least what he thinks, or what he says of me!" "Dear me, how oddly things go!" thought Lady Marabout. "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!" "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_. "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?"