At all of which remarks Lady Marabout winced, and felt painfully guilty of a gross democratic dereliction from legitimate and beaten paths, conscious of having sinned heavily in the eyes of the world and Lady Hautton, by bringing within the sacred precincts of Belgravia the daughter of a _mauvais sujet_ in a West India corps and a sister of a perpetual curate. The world was a terrible dragon to Lady Marabout; to her imagination it always appeared an incarnated and omniscient bugbear, Argus-eyed, and with all its hundred eyes relentlessly fixed on her, spying out each item of her shortcomings, every little flaw in the Marabout diamonds, any spur-made tear in her Honiton flounces, any crease in her train at a Drawing-room, any lèse-majesté against the royal rule of conventionalities, any glissade on the polished oak floor of society, though like a good many other people she often worried herself needlessly; the flaws, tears, creases, high treasons, and false glissades being fifty to one too infinitesimal or too unimportant to society for one of the hundred eyes (vigilant and unwinking though I grant they are) to take note of them. The world was a terrible bugbear to Lady Marabout, and its special impersonation was Anne Hautton. She disliked Anne Hautton; she didn't esteem her; she knew her to be a narrow, censorious, prejudiced, and strongly malicious lady; but she was the personification of the World to Lady Marabout, and had weight and terror in consequence. Lady Marabout is not the first person who has burnt incense and bowed in fear before a little miserable clay image she cordially despised, for no better reason--for the self-same reason, indeed. "She evidently thinks I ought not to have brought Flora out; and perhaps I shouldn't; though, poor little thing, it seems very hard she may not enjoy society--fitted for society, too, as she is--just because her father is in a West India regiment, and poor Lilla was only a clergyman's daughter. Goodwood really seems to admire her. I can never forgive him for his heartless flirtation with Valencia; but if he _were_ to be won by a Montolieu, what would the Hauttons say?" And sitting against the wall, with others of her sisterhood, at a ball, a glorious and golden vision rose up before Lady Marabout's eyes. If the unknown, unwelcome, revolutionary little Montolieu should go in and win where the Lady Hauttons had tried and failed through five seasons--if this little tropical flower should be promoted to the Doncaster conservatory, where all the stately stephanotises of the peerage had vainly aspired to bloom--if this Petit Caporal should be crowned with the Doncaster diadem, that all the legitimate rulers had uselessly schemed to place on their brows! The soul of Lady Marabout rose elastic at the bare prospect--it would be a great triumph for a chaperone as for a general to conquer a valuable position with a handful of boy recruits.