"I must consider, Philip, I have brought out the beauty of the season," said Lady Marabout to Carruthers, eying her niece as she danced at her first ball at the Dowager-Duchess of Amandine's, and beginning to brighten up a little under the weight of her responsibilities. "I think you have, mother. Val's indisputably handsome. You must tell her to make play with Goodwood or Nugent." Lady Marabout unfurled her fan, and indignantly interrupted him: "My dear Philip! do you suppose I would teach Valencia, or any girl under my charge, to lay herself out for any man, whoever or whatever it might be? I trust your cousin would not stoop to use such manoeuvres, did I even stoop to counsel them. Depend upon it, Philip, it is precisely those women who try to 'make play,' as you call it, with your sex that fail most to charm them. It is abominable the way in which you men talk, as if we all hunted you down, and would drive you to St. George's _nolens volens_!" "So you would, mother," laughed Carruthers. "We 'eligible men' have a harder life of it than rabbits in a warren, with a dozen beagles after them. From the minute we're of age we're beset with traps for the unwary, and the spring-guns are so dexterously covered, with an inviting, innocent-looking turf of courtesies and hospitalities that it's next to a mural impossibility to escape them, let one retire into one's self, keep to monosyllables through all the courses of all the dinners and all the turns of all the valses, and avoid everything 'compromising,' as one may. I've suffered, and can tell you. I suffer still, though I believe and hope they are beginning to look on me as an incurable, given over to the clubs, the coulisses, and the cover-side. There's a fellow that's known still more of the _peines fortes et dures_ than I. Goodwood's coming to ask for an introduction to Val, I would bet."