"Yes, it is going on--but not in the old style. Mr. Westmoreland has fallen in love with her really now--as far as such a brainless hippopotamus is capable of falling in love, that is to say. I suppose, the fact of her having a great fortune and high connections makes all the difference. And she is really uncommonly pretty. It is only in these last weeks that I have fully understood how much prettier she is than other girls, and I believe he, to do him justice, has always understood it in his stupid, coarse way." "And Nelly?" "Nelly," said Patty, "has been finding out a great deal lately. She knows well enough how pretty she is, and she knows what money and all the other things are worth. She is tasting the sweets of power, and she likes it--she likes it too much, I think--she will grow into a bit of a snob, if she doesn't mind. She is 'coming the swell' over Mr. Westmoreland, to use one of his own choice idioms--not exactly rudely, because she has such pretty manners, but with the most superb impertinence, all the same--and practising coquetry as if she had been beset with abject lovers all her life. She sits upon him and teases him and aggravates him till he doesn't know how to contain himself. It is _too_ ridiculous." "I should have thought he was the last man to let himself be sat upon." "So should I. But he courts it--he obtrudes his infatuated servility--he goes and asks her, as it were, to sit upon him. It has the charm of novelty and difficulty, I suppose. People must get tired of having their own way always." "But I can't understand Nelly." "You soon will. You will see to-night how she goes on, for he is coming to dinner. She will tantalise him till he will forget where he is, and lose all sense of decency, and be fit to stamp and roar like a great buffalo. She says it is 'taking it out of him.' And she will look at the time so sweet and serene and unconscious--bah! I could box her ears," concluded Patty. "And Mrs. Duff-Scott encourages him still, then?"