“You talk as if savages were all radicals,” he said. “I’d bet you anything you like that rank and money are quite as much esteemed among them as here with us, and a lady whose husband can hang up fourteen scalps over her front door would think twice before she called on another woman with only six or seven of such trophies. Look at the way in which Africans kow-tow to their chiefs. Rank and titles are visible signs of power, and power will always be reverenced.” “Yes; but not fallen in love with. Conceive the notion that those nasty girls played at me, sang at me, rode and drove at me for two mortal days, and all in the hope of what? Securing my affection? Not a bit of it. Just with the idea of persuading me that they were in love with me, so that one of them might run a chance of becoming some day Countess of Northborough.” “How bitter you are against women!” exclaimed his friend, lighting a cigar. “Now _I_ thought them very nice and very pretty girls.” “_You_ can appreciate them, because you stand on your own merits,” grumbled Lord Carthew. “When you fall in love with a girl, you will know her affection is disinterested. I don’t see how girls can help falling in love with a fellow like you,” he added, glancing with envious admiration at Pritchard’s fine figure. “My dear Claud, that speech shows how little you understand women’s tastes. Last season I went about a good bit with an aunt who is fond of society, and I never had the ghost of a chance of talking to any specially agreeable women. The little men, writer-chaps, or long-haired, foreign musicians, or else your dapper little, well-oiled and varnished tea-and-scandal-loving exquisites--those are the men who win women’s hearts. I assure you that after remarking with surprise how large I am, they take no more interest in me than if I were so much beef.”