And Lady Marabout shook her head and looked grave, which, combined with the ever-damnatory demonstrative conjunction, blackened Mrs. Maréchale's moral character as much as Lady Marabout could blacken any one's, she loving as little to soil her own fingers and her neighbors' reputations with the indelible Italian chalk of scandal as any lady I know; being given, on the contrary, when compelled to draw any little social croquis of a back-biting nature, to sketch them in as lightly as she could, take out as many lights as possible, and rub in the shadows with a very chary and pitying hand, except, indeed, when she took the portrait of such an Ogre as Chandos Cheveley, when I can't say she was quite so merciful, specially when policy and prejudice combined to suggest that it would be best (and not unjust) to use the blackest Conté crayons obtainable. The subject of it would not have denied the correctness of the silhouette Lady Marabout had snipped out for the edification of Lady Cecil, had he caught a glimpse of it: he had no habitation, nor was ever likely to have any, save a bachelor's suite in a back street; he had been an idle man for the last twenty years, with not a sou to be idle upon; the springs of his very precarious fortunes, his pursuits, habits, reputation, ways and means, were all much what she had described them; yet he set the fashion much oftener than Goodwood, and dukes and millionnaires would follow the style of his tie, or the shape of his hat; he moved in the most brilliant circles as Court Circulars have it, and all the best houses were open to him. At his Grace of Amandine's, staying there for the shooting, he would alter the stud, find fault with the claret, arrange a Drive for deer in the forest, and flirt with her Grace herself, as though, as Lady Marabout averred, he had been Heir-apparent or Prince Regent, who honored the Castle by his mere presence, Amandine all the while swearing by every word he spoke, thinking nothing well done without Cheveley, and submitting to be set aside in his own Castle, with the greatest gratification at the extinction.