Cecil Ormsby laughed--a gay, joyous laugh, innocent of having disturbed a doze, a lapse into human weakness of which her chaperone never permitted herself to plead guilty. "Frightened you, did I? Why, your _bête noire_ is as terrible to you as Coeur de Lion to the Saracen children, or Black Douglas to the Lowland! And, really, I can't see anything terrible in him; he is excessively brilliant and agreeable, has something worth hearing to say to you, and his waltzing is----!" Lady Cecil Ormsby had not a word in her repertory--though it was an enthusiastic and comprehensive one, and embraced five languages--sufficiently commendatory to finish her sentence. "I dare say, dear! I never denied, or heard denied, his having every accomplishment under the sun. The only pity is, he has nothing more substantial!" returned Lady Marabout, a little bit tartly for _her_ lips, only used to the softest (and most genuine) milk of roses. Lord Rosediamond's daughter laughed a little mournfully, and played with her fan. "Poor man! Brilliant and beggared, fashionable and friendless, courted and cashiered--a sad destiny! Do you know, Lady Marabout, I have half a mind to champion your Ogre!" "My love, don't talk nonsense!" said Lady Marabout, hastily, at which Lady Cecil only laughed still more softly and gayly again, and sprung down as the carriage stopped in Lowndes Square. "Rosediamond's daughter's deucedly handsome, eh, Cheveley? I saw you waltzing with her last night," said Goodwood at Lord's the next morning, watching a match between the Household Cavalry and the Zingari Eleven. "Yes, she is the best thing we have seen for some time," said Cheveley, glancing round to see if the Marabout liveries were on the ground. "Don't let the Amandine or little Maréchale hear you say so, or you'll have a deuce of a row," laughed Goodwood. "She's worth a good deal, too; she's all her mother's property, and that's something, I know. The deaths in her family have kept her back two years or more, but now she _is_ out, I dare say Lady Tattersall will put her up high in the market." "No doubt. Why don't _you_ make the investment--she's much more attractive than that Valletort ice statue who hooked you so nearly last year? Fortescue's out! Well done, little Jimmy! Ah! there's the Marabout carriage. I am as unwelcome to that good lady, I know, as if I were Quasimodo or Quilp, and as much to be shunned, in her estimation, as Vidocq, armed to the teeth; nevertheless, I shall go and talk to them, if only in revenge for the telegraphic warning of 'dangerous' she shot at Lady Cecil last night when I asked her to waltz. Goodwood, don't you envy me my happy immunity from traps matrimonial?"