In scheming for the future Duke of Doncaster for John Montolieu's daughter, she felt much as democratically and treasonably guilty to her order as a prince of the blood might feel heading a Chartist émeute; but then, suppose the Chartist row was that Prince's sole chance of crushing an odious foe, as it was the only chance for her to humiliate the Hautton, don't you think it might look tempting? Judge nobody, my good sir, till you've been in similar circumstances yourself--a golden rule, which might with advantage employ those illuminating colors with which ladies employ so much of their time just now. Remembering it, they might hold their white hands from flinging those sharp flinty stones, that surely suit them so ill, and that soil their fingers in one way quite as much as they soil the victim's bowed head in another? Illuminate the motto, mesdames and demoiselles! Perhaps you _will_ do that--on a smalt ground, with a gold Persian arabesque round, and impossible flowers twined in and out of the letters; but, _remember_ it!--pardon! It were asking too much. "My dear Philip, did you notice how very marked Goodwood's attentions were to Flora last night?" asked Lady Marabout, the morning after, in one of her most sunshiny and radiant moods, as Carruthers paid her his general matutinal call in her boudoir. "Marked?" "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!" "My dear mother!" said Carruthers, a little impatiently, brushing up the Angora cat's ruff the wrong way with his cane, "do you suppose I pass my evenings noticing the attentions other men may see fit to pay to young ladies?" "Well--don't be impatient. You never used to be," said Lady Marabout. "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.'" "Quite right, my dear mother!"