“And I can assure you, sir, she is not the only woman who deserves your honour for intellect and perseverance,” insisted Lady Bell, woman-like, not content with the inch conceded, but proceeding to ask a yard. “Of course it is not given to many women to be endowed like Mrs. Damer, but if you knew my dear Mrs. Sundon, down at Summerhill, how wise she is, how attentive to all her duties, how regular and unwearied in her studies—well!” she broke off enthusiastically, “she shames me into solidity and steadiness. I never have a fit of the gapes, and I am in no way flighty when I am with her.” “That is a great testimony,” said Captain Fane with grave abstraction, as if he were meditating on the force of the evidence. “You provoking man!” Lady Sundon reproached him, rapping him across the fingers with her fan, while Lady Bell bit her lips with pique, and turned away indignant at being laughed at, a process to which she was not over much accustomed. Lady Bell was too proud to pout, but she had made up her mind that she would submit to no more flouting from this impertinent, conceited sailor, when all at once he begged her pardon, said penitently and agreeably that Mrs. Sundon was at least fortunate in having such an advocate that he could take the unknown lady’s superiority on trust. Lady Bell felt rewarded for her gallantry in fighting the humoursome sailor, when she had constrained him to soften his looks and tones, and to except not merely Mrs. Sundon but herself in his budget of criticism—if Lady Sundon had let the man alone in leaving him to his better mind, and had not, by interfering, spoilt all! “Mercy on us!” Lady Sundon ejaculated, “wonders will never cease; my polar bear has paid a compliment!” “Not paid a compliment—told a truth,” Captain Fane had condescended to say further, quite graciously. “Another, another, Harry! you’re a reformed man on the spot—see what a pretty woman can do—a bear that has changed its skin!” Lady Sundon had leapt too fast to a conclusion. “I am afraid I must damp your expectation, and shock you once more,” alleged Captain Fane, with a perverse twinkle in his eyes, “for I was about to add that if your Mrs. Sundon is so wondrous wise a woman, why did she go ‘in the galley,’ as I have understood she did? I mean, why did she throw herself away on so dissipated a man and so inveterate a gambler as Gregory Sundon, of Chevely, whose disgrace had been so manifest and black, that he has been suffered to drop clean out of this corrupt enough gay world, as well as out of his wife’s offended sight. If she was to be particular, she should have begun sooner.”