But Georgie was not only young, but country-bred,--which means a great deal, for London girls at seventeen know more of the world than country girls at five-and-twenty,--and had had scarcely any experience. So she went to work naturally, and betrayed her anger in the plainest manner,--in perpetual supervision, in lip-bitings and hand-clenchings, in occasional tears, which _would_ come welling up into her eyes, however far back she might hold her head, and were perfectly visible, however hastily brushed away. To Mrs. Hammond, who was a practised duelist, all this behaviour was delightful; she took it as a tribute to her own powers of fascination, and was proportionately pleased. Flirtation, in its strongest sense, was absolutely necessary to her existence; but she never condescended to boys, and she regarded officers, when merely officers and nothing more, as very small game. She liked to entangle men of position and celebrity, no matter how grave or how old (she had perfectly charmed a bachelor bishop; and the enemies of one of our greatest physicians declared that his wife rendered his home unbearable on account of his attentions to Mrs. Hammond); and the latest literary, artistic, or theatrical lion was usually to be found hovering about her. But far beyond anything else she liked a flirtation with the husband of an acknowledged pretty woman; and the more beautiful the wife, the more bent was Laura Hammond on captivating the husband That gave her greater _éclat_ than anything else, and she liked _éclat_. She liked being talked about,--up to a certain point; she liked women to express their wonder at what men could see in her to rave about; she liked to have repeated to her what men said at clubs: "'Str'ord'nary little woman the Hammond! There's Cosmo Gordon been everywhere with her, leaving that lovely wife of his all by herself, by Jove! What the doose can there be in her?" and other speeches of a like nature. She also liked to be on good terms with the wives of her admirers--a thing by no means so difficult as might be imagined by the inexperienced. There are women so spaniel-like in their nature that they will fawn on those who injure them; and some of these consorted with Mrs. Hammond with a vain idea of propitiating her by their forbearance, and thus inducing her to give up the chase. She had at first thought that Georgie Mitford might be of this order; but she was by no means disappointed to find her otherwise. She gloried in a contest out of which she could come victorious, and despised all easy triumphs; there was pleasure in captivating a man whose position or celebrity reflected lustre on his enslaver; but there was tenfold pleasure when he, in his blind infatuation, set the rules of society at defiance, and openly neglected the wife whose beauty had hitherto been his greatest pride.