"Nor can I imagine myself tolerating his society for half-an-hour, if he were not what he is," answered Flo blithely. "Don't I tell you that he is the rich Mr. Lobyer? Even his name is horrible, you see--Lobyer! He might make it a little better by tacking on some aristocratic _prénom_. Vavasor Lobyer, or Plantagenet Lobyer, or something of that kind, might sound almost tolerable. Yes, he is very stupid, Cecil; but he seems rather a good young fellow; he laughs good-naturedly when other people are laughing, and he gets on wonderfully with my cockatoos. There seems to be an instinctive kind of sympathy between him and cockatoos, and they allow him to rumple their feathers and scratch their foreheads in the most amiable manner. You know what a place the Fountains is, and how often _I_ sit in the conservatory that leads to the painting-room, or else just outside papa's bay-window; so of course when Mr. Lobyer came to talk about the pictures, he loitered and hung about playing with the birds, and sniffing at the flowers in that horrible fidgety manner peculiar to some young men, until papa came out of the painting-room to tell me I had better go for a drive, which meant that Mr. Lobyer was to take his departure. And I really think, Cecil, that if I had not kept him at bay that unfortunate young man would have made me an offer that very morning, after meeting me rather less than half-a-dozen times." "But, Florence, you surely would never marry such a person?" "For goodness' sake, Cecil, don't call him a person! Haven't I always told you that I meant to marry for money, and don't I tell you that Mr. Lobyer is preposterously rich? I acknowledge that he is stupid and ignorant--more Manchester than Manchester itself; but are there not guardsmen with long pedigrees who are as boorish and ignorant as Mr. Lobyer? I am not like those absurd girls who look in the glass and fancy they are like the two beautiful Miss Gunnings, and have only to show themselves in the park in order to captivate marquises and royal dukes." "And you would really marry for money, Flory?" said Cecil very sadly. "Is there any thing so well worth marrying for? Who was that stupid old legal person who said that knowledge is power? Why did he take bribes and sell public offices if he thought that? Depend upon it, Cecil, that money is power, and the only power worth wielding. Money is power, and beauty, and grace, and fascination. Do you think Anne of Austria fell in love with plain George Villiers? No, Cecil; she fell in love with the Duke of Buckingham, and his white uncut velvet suit, and his diamonds, and the jewels he dropped among her maids-of-honour, and all the pageantry and splendour around and about him."