“Quite the reverse. It was a faint weak sketch of the great original. In all my life I never met such inordinate vanity and such overweening pretension. I give him the palm as the most conceited man and the greatest bore in Christendom.” “Do you wonder now if I could n't live with him?” asked she, half triumphantly. “I 'll not go that far. I think I could live with him if I saw my way to any advantage by it.” “I'm certain you could not! The very things you now reprobate are the few endurable traits about him. It is in the resources of his intense conceit he finds whatever renders him pleasant and agreeable. I wish you saw his other humor.” “I can imagine it may not be all that one would desire; but still--” “It comes well from you to talk of submitting and yielding,” burst out Lady Lendrick. “I certainly have not yet detected these traits in your character; and I tell you frankly, you and Sir William could not live a week under the same roof together. Don't you agree with me, Lucy?” “What should she know about it?” said he, fiercely; and before she could reply, “I don't suspect she knows a great deal about me,--she knows nothing at all about _him_.” “Well, would you like to live with him yourself, Lucy?” asked Lady Lendrick. “I don't say I 'd _like_ it, but I think it might be done,” said she, faintly, and scarcely raising her eyes as she spoke. “Of course, then, my intractable temper is the cause of all our incompatibility; my only consolation is that I have a son and a daughter-in-law so charmingly endowed that their virtues are more than enough to outweigh my faults.” “What I say is this,” said the Colonel, sternly,--“I think the man is a bore or a bully, but that he need n't be both if one does n't like it. Now I 'd consent to be bored, to escape being bullied, which is precisely the reverse of what you appear to have done.” “I am charmed with the perspicuity you display. I hope, Lucy, that it tends to the happiness of your married life to have a husband so well able to read character.” Apparently this was a double-headed shot, for neither spoke for several minutes. “I declare I almost wish he would put you to the test,” said Lady Lendrick. “I mean, I wish he'd ask you to the Priory.” “I fancy it is what he means to do,” said Mrs. Sewell, in the same low tone,--“at least he came to me when I was standing in the small drawing-room, and said, 'How would you endure the quiet stillness and uniformity of such a life as I lead here? Would its dulness overpower you?'” “Of course, you said it would be paradise,” broke in her Ladyship; “you hinted all about your own resources, and such-like.”