"Is that really as people say?" asked Lord Boileau. "Oh! quite settled long ago," answered Lord Gascoigne; "and as she is a _maitresse femme_, she will not allow him to forsake her quietly." "How very beautiful, how very lovely she is, Boileau!" said Lord Baskerville, approaching at that moment; "now that she can neither talk nor laugh, she is quite charming--hem! I never knew before that she was handsome--hem! She ought to do nothing but faint--hem!" "Yes," they both replied, "she is very lovely indeed." "I rather envy Leslie Winyard," cried Lord Boileau: "that fellow has always been lucky. But have you seen Lady Adeline Seymour, _la nouveauté du jour_? Rather raw and unfledged yet, but she will be a very fine creature a year or two hence." "Don't you know her story?" whispered Lord Baskerville, approaching his mouth to the ear of Lord Boileau. "No--yes--I did hear something of it. She is going to be married, isn't she?" "She _was_," rejoined Lord Baskerville, looking very wise; "but, a-hem! that's all off now. I know all about it--hem! for _he_ is so involved, hem! that marriage is impossible--hem! And really the poor girl has _echappé belle_; for I never knew such a puritanical affected--hem! I cannot conceive what the women see about him to endure him for a moment--hem!" By this time the report of Lady Glenmore's having fainted spread through the rooms, and there were assembled around her Lady Tilney, Lady Ellersby, and the Comtesse Leinsengen. "I do not wonder you were overcome, my dear Lady Glenmore; it was terribly hot," said Lady Tilney in her most coaxing manner. "These vile drawing-rooms are quite enough to kill one. Such a heat, and such a crowd of Heaven knows whom! And then to see whom, or what? for one never sees the ostensible object for whom one comes here. If it were not to oblige Lord Tilney, and because one must, I would never come to such a horrid place again. My dear Lady Glenmore, you who have suffered so much are, I am sure, out of all patience with the whole thing." Lady Glenmore, who had by this time quite recovered, and who was placed very comfortably enjoying the fresh breeze that came to her unpolluted by the heat and breath of the crowd, as she sat close by the window, now resumed her accustomed smiling cheerfulness, and replied, "Not at all, Lady Tilney; I assure you I have been much amused, and think it is a very splendid scene;--so much beauty, so much magnificence, that I was quite provoked at myself for being overcome, and unable to enjoy it; but I am perfectly well again _now_, and I hope another time to be more used to it." "_Quelle niaiserie!_" whispered the Comtesse Leinsengen to Lord Baskerville. "She ought to go back to her nursery."