"To me, Mrs. Amelia, she appeared ever as Alpha, the first and the brightest." "And do you really think her pretty?" "Much more than pretty; that adjective would apply to a milliner's apprentice tripping down St. James's Street with a hat-box. Irene is to my mind the very incarnation of girlish loveliness." "Surely her nose is too long." "Not the infinitesimal fraction of an inch. Her nose is as perfect as Diana's. Praxiteles never moulded a more delicate feature. I know that ladies have a friendly good-humoured way of taking each other's charms and attractions to pieces, like the bits of a toy puzzle, and discussing and cheapening every feature; but all the feminine detraction that was ever uttered over a tea-table, out of sheer good-humour, would not lessen my admiration of Miss Bosworth by one tittle." "She has a very handsome face," said Lady Tredgold, with a decided air, as if to put a stop to triviality, "but she has no figure." "She does not exhibit her person to all the world, as so many of our fashionable beauties have a habit of doing," replied Durnford. His heart was beating fast and furiously. He had brought the conversation--or it had in somewise drifted--to the very point which might serve his purpose, and he had a serious purpose in this philandering with Lady Tredgold and her daughters. "My dear sir, it is useless to play the moralist in such an age as ours," retorted her ladyship impatiently. "If women have fine statuesque shoulders they will show them, and if they are ill-made or scraggy--which I thank Heaven neither of my girls are--they will order their gowns to be cut high and make a monstrous merit of modesty. My niece is not actually ill-made--her poor mother had an exquisite shape--but she is a willowy slip of a child with an undeveloped figure. Compare her, for instance, with your friend Lady Judith Topsparkle." "Lady Judith is lovely, I grant," replied Durnford, "but your ladyship can hardly admire the lavish display of her charms to all the world. There was an artistic suggestion of nakedness in her loose Turkish robe at the masquerade last winter which provoked remarks I would rather not hear about any woman I respect--as I do Lady Judith. It would torture me to hear my wife so talked about." "Should you be lucky enough to marry my cousin Irene, you need never fear too lavish a display of her shoulders," said Amelia cantankerously. "Be sure she will always cover them decently, especially her _right_ shoulder." "Come, come, child, there are things that should not be babbled about, however good-naturedly," remonstrated Lady Tredgold. "Do you mean to insinuate that she is deformed?" asked Durnford, more intent than ever.