"Of course it's quite right. I always think you have a great deal of sympathy for a man, Philip, even for people you don't harmonize with--(you could sympathize with that child Flora, yesterday, in her rapturous delight at seeing that Coccoloba Uvifera in the Patchouli conservatory, because it reminded her of her West Indian home, and you care nothing whatever about flowers, nor yet about the West Indies, I should suppose)--but you never will sympathize with me. You know how many disappointments and grievances and vexations of every kind I have had the last ten, twenty, ay, thirty, forty seasons--ever since I had to chaperone your aunt Eleanore, almost as soon as I was married, and was worried, more than anybody ever _was_ worried, by her coquetteries and her inconsistencies and her vacillations--so badly as she married, too, at the last! Those flirting beauties so often do; they throw away a hundred admirable chances and put up with a wretched _dernier resort_;--let a thousand salmon break away from the line out of their carelessness, and end by being glad to land a little minnow. I don't know when I _haven't_ been worried by chaperoning. Flora Montolieu is a great anxiety, a great difficulty, little detrimental that she is!" "Detrimental! What an odd word you choose for her." "I don't choose it for her; she _is_ it," returned Lady Marabout, decidedly. "How so?" "How so! Why, my dear Philip, I told you the very first day she came. How so! when she is John Montolieu's daughter, when she has no birth to speak of, and not a farthing to her fortune." "If she were Jack Ketch's daughter, you could not speak much worse. Her high-breeding might do credit to a Palace; I only wish one found it in all Palaces! and I never knew you before measure people by their money." "My dear Philip, no more I do. I can't bear you when you speak in that tone; it's so hard and sarcastic, and unlike you. _I_ don't know what you mean either. I should have thought a man of the world like yourself knew well enough what I intend when I say Flora is a detrimental. She has a sweet temper, very clever, very lively, very charming, as any one knows by the number of men that crowd about her, but a detrimental she is----" "Poor little heart!" muttered Carruthers in his beard, too low for his mother to hear. "--And yet I am quite positive that if she herself act judiciously, and it is well managed for her, Goodwood may be won before the season is over," concluded Lady Marabout. Carruthers, not feeling much interest, it is presumed, in the exclusively feminine pursuit of match-making, returned no answer, but played with Bijou's silver bells, and twisted his own tawny moustaches. "I am quite positive it _may be_, if properly managed," reiterated Lady Marabout. "You might second me a little, Philip."