Was it of any use to reason with a young lady who talked like this? Miss Crawford had enjoyed all those advantages of education which fall to the share of middle-class damsels of the present day, and the possession of which a century ago would have made a young lady a phenomenon. She spoke French perfectly; she knew a little Italian, and had read the _Promessi Sposi_, and could quote little bits of Dante and Petrarch; she could read German, and quoted Goethe and Schiller on occasions; she played brilliantly, and painted tolerably, and waltzed exquisitely; but of that moral education which some mothers and fathers bestow upon their children, Florence Crawford was utterly destitute. She had brought herself up; and she prided herself on that high-bred heartlessness, or affectation of heartlessness, which seemed one of the most fashionable graces of her day. She had founded herself, as she fancied, on the best models. "Better to be Becky Sharpe than Amelia Sedley," she said "and the world is full of Beckys and Amelias." She could find a very tolerable excuse for herself and her companions. "The men complain that we are fast and mercenary; that we talk slang, and try to make rich marriages; and there are articles about us in the fashionable newspapers, just as if we were a new variety in animal creation, on view in Regent's Park. Do they ever stop to consider who taught us to be what we are? Can the gentlemen, whose highest praise of a woman is to say that she is jolly, and has no nonsense about her, and sits square on her horse, wonder very much if we cultivate the only accomplishments they admire?" Cecil had often tried to remonstrate with her volatile friend, and had as often found her efforts utterly thrown away. So to-night she allowed Flo to devote herself to the Belgian _attaché_, and abandoned herself to her own thoughts, only making a little pretence of joining in the conversation now and then. Sometimes, while she listlessly turned the leaves of an album, whose every leaf she knew by heart, Lady Cecil glanced upward to the angle of the mantelpiece by which Laurence O'Boyneville stood, in conversation with the judge and the painter; for, however charming the society of lovely and accomplished woman may be, men have an attraction for one another, in comparison with which all feminine witchery is weak and futile. Looking at the little group by the chimney-piece, Cecil saw that the barrister had by far the largest share in the conversation. He was very animated, and those large white hands, which were so eminently useful to him in court, were considerably employed to illustrate his discourse. That he was talking well she could see in the attentive faces of his listeners, for Indian judges and popular painters do not listen with any show of interest to a man who talks nonsense. Lady Cecil began to think that after all there must be something a little out of the common in this dreadful man.