Which she would have been, undoubtedly, and the eligibles on her visiting-list ten times more too! Men wouldn't have voted the Marabout dinners and soirées so pleasant as they did, under the sway of that sunshiny hostess, if there had been Lady Maudes and Lady Marys to exact attention, and lay mines under the Auxerre carpets, and man-traps among the épergne flowers of Lowndes Square. Nor would Lady Marabout have been the same; the sunshine couldn't have shone so brightly, nor the milk of roses flowed so mildly under the weight and wear of marriageable but unmarried daughters; the sunshine would have been fitful, the milk of roses curdled at best. And no wonder! Those poor women! they have so much to go through in the world, and play but such a monotonous rôle, taken at its most brilliant and best, from first to last, from cradle to grave, from the berceaunettes in which they commence their existence to the mausoleum in which they finish it. If they _do_ get a little bit soured when they have finished their own game, and have to sit at the card-tables, wide awake however weary, vigilant however drowsy, alert however bored to death, superintending the hands of the fresh players, surreptitiously suggesting means for securing the tricks, keeping a dragon's eye out for revokes, and bearing all the brunt of the blame if the rubber be lost--if they do get a little bit soured, who can, after all, greatly wonder? "That's a very brilliant little thing, that girl Montolieu," said Goodwood, driving over to Hornsey Wood, the morning after, with Carruthers and some other men, in his drag. "A deuced pretty waltzer!" said St. Lys, of the Bays; "turn her round in a square foot." "And looks very well in the saddle; sits her horse better than any woman in the Ride, except Rosalie Rosière, and as she came from the Cirque Olympique originally, one don't count _her_," said Fulke Nugent. "I _do_ like a woman to ride well, I must say. I promised your mother to take a look at the Marabout Yearling Sale, Phil, if ever I wanted the never-desirable and ever-burdensome article she has to offer, and if anything could tempt me to pay the price she asks, I think it would be that charming Montolieu." "She's the best thing Lady Tattersall ever had on hand," said Goodwood, drawing his whip over his off-wheeler's back. "You know, Phil--gently, gently, Coronet!--what spoilt your handsome cousin was, as I said, that it was all mechanism; perfect mechanism, I admit, but all artificial, prearranged, put together, wound up to smile in this place, bow in that, and frown in the other; clockwork every inch of it! Now--so-ho, Zouave! confound you, _won't_ you be quiet?--little Montolieu hasn't a bit of artifice about her; 'tisn't only that you don't know what she's going to say, but that _she_ doesn't either; and whether it's a smile or a frown, a jest or a reproof, it's what the moment brings out, not what's planned beforehand."