'Poor fellow!' said Desvoeux, who knew perfectly that Felicia's observations were half-intended for himself, 'it is all his enthusiasm. He is as proud of every fresh flirtation as if it were a new experience--like a young hen that has just laid its first egg. He always seems to me to be chuckling and crowing to the universe, "Behold! heaven and earth! I have hatched another scandal." Now,' he added, 'Miss Vernon, if ever you and I had a flirtation we should not wish all the world to "assist," as the French people say, should we? People might suspect our devotion, and guess and gossip; but there would not be this revolting matter-of-fact publicity; and we should be for ever putting people off the scent: I should still look into the Misses Blunt's eyes, still dance a state quadrille with their mamma, still talk to Mrs. Vereker about the stars, still feel the poetry of Miss Fotheringham's new Paris dresses: you would continue to fascinate mankind at large; only we two between ourselves should know how mutually broken-hearted we had become.' 'That is a contingency,' Felicia said, in a manner which Desvoeux understood as a command to abandon the topic, which, happily, there is no need to discuss.' The conversation turned to something else; but Felicia made up her mind more than ever that their visitor was a very impertinent fellow, and more than ever resolved to guard Maud's heart from every form of attack which he could bring to bear against it. No protection could, she felt, be half so satisfactory as the counter-attraction of a lover who would be everything that Desvoeux was not, and whom all the world acknowledged to be alike _sans peur_ and _sans reproche_. CHAPTER XI. FRIENDS IN COUNCIL. After short silence then, And summons sent, the great debate began. A body constituted of as discordant elements as the three members of the Salt Board was not likely to remain very long at peace with itself; and for weeks past, Blunt's increasing truculence of deportment had warned his colleagues of an approaching outbreak.