Cecil Castlemaine's Gage, Lady Marabout's Troubles, and Other StoriesOuida
General
Cecil Castlemaine's Gage, Lady Marabout's Troubles, and Other Stories
Ouida
Great Britain -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction
"He is handsome enough. _Did_ Philip introduce him to you, my dear? I
wonder! It was very careless of him. But men _are_ so thoughtless; they
will know anybody themselves, and they think we may do the same. The men
called here while we were driving this morning. I am glad we were out:
he very seldom comes to _my_ house."
"But why is he so dreadful? The Amandines are tremendously exclusive, I
thought."
"Oh, he goes everywhere! No party is complete without Chandos Cheveley,
and I have heard that at September or Christmas he has more invitations
than he could possibly accept; but he is a most objectionable man, all
the same--a man every one dreads to see come near her daughters. He has
extreme fascination of manner, but he has not a farthing! How he lives,
dresses, drives the horses he does, is one of those miracles of London
men's lives which _we_ can never hope to puzzle out. Philip says he
likes him, but Philip never speaks ill of anybody, except a woman now
and then, who teases him; but the man is my detestation--has been for
years. I was annoyed to see his card: it is the first time he has called
this season. He knows I can't endure his class or him."
With which Lady Marabout wound up a very unusually lengthy and
uncharitable disquisition, length and uncharitableness being both out of
her line; and Lady Cecil Ormsby rolled her handkerchief into a ball,
threw it across the room for Bonbon, the spaniel puppy, and laughed till
the cockatoo screamed with delight:
"Dear Lady Marabout, do forgive me, but it is such fun to hear you
positively, for once, malicious! Who is your Horror, genealogically
speaking? this terrible--what's his name?--Chandos Cheveley?"
"The younger son of a younger son of one of the Marquises of Danvers, I
believe, my dear; an idle man about town, you know, with not a sou to be
idle upon, who sets the fashion, but never pays his tailor. I am never
malicious, I hope, but I do consider men of that stamp very
objectionable."
"But what is Sir Philip but a man about town?"
"My son! Of course he is a man about town. My dear, what else should he
be? But if Philip likes to lounge all his days away in a club-window, he
has a perfect right; he has fortune. Chandos Cheveley is not worth a
farthing, and yet yawns away his day in White's as if he were a
millionnaire; the one can support his _far niente_, the other cannot.
There are gradations in everything, my love, but in nothing more than
among the men, of the same set and the same style, whom one sees in
Pall-Mall."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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