"Clever men," said Lady Selina, "as a general rule, do choose the oddest wives! The cleverer a man is, the more easily, I do believe, a woman can take him in. However, to do Mr. Darrell justice, he has been taken in only once. After Mrs. Darrell's death, Mrs. Lyndsay, I suspect, tried her chance, but failed. Of course, she would not actually stay in the same house with a widower who was then young, and who had only to get rid of a wife to whom one was forced to be shy in order to be received into our set with open arms, and, in short, to be of the very best monde. Mr. Darrell came into Parliament immensely rich (a legacy from an old East Indian, besides his own professional savings); took the house he has now, close by us. Mrs. Lyndsay was obliged to retire to a cottage at Fulham. But as she professed to be a second mother to poor Matilda Darrell, she contrived to be very much at Carlton Gardens; her daughter Caroline was nearly always there, profiting by Matilda's masters; and I did think that Mrs. Lyndsay would have caught Darrell, but your papa said 'No,' and he was right, as he always is. Nevertheless, Mrs. Lyndsay would have been an excellent wife to a public man: so popular; knew the world so well; never made enemies till she made an enemy of poor dear Montfort, but that was natural. By the by, I must write to Caroline. Sweet creature! but how absurd, shutting herself up as if she were fretting for Montfort! That's so like her mother,--heartless, but full of propriety." Here Carr Vipont and Colonel Morley entered the room. "We have just left Darrell," said Carr; "he will dine here to-day, to meet our cousin Alban. I have asked his cousin, young Haughton, and--and, your cousins, Selina (a small party of cousins); so lucky to find Darrell disengaged." "I ventured to promise," said the Colonel, addressing Honoria in an under voice, "that Darrell should hear you play Beethoven." HONORIA.--"Is Mr. Darrell so fond of music, then?" COLONEL MORLEY.--"One would not have thought it. He keeps a secretary at Fawley who plays the flute. There's something very interesting about Darrell. I wish you could hear his ideas on marriage and domestic life: more freshness of heart than in the young men one meets nowadays. It may be prejudice; but it seems to me that the young fellows of the present race, if more sober and staid than we were, are sadly wanting in character and spirit,--no warm blood in their veins. But I should not talk thus to a demoiselle who has all those young fellows at her feet." "Oh," said Lady Selina, overhearing, and with a half laugh, "Honoria thinks much as you do: she finds the young men so insipid; all like one another,--the same set phrases." "The same stereotyped ideas," added Honoria, moving away with a gesture of calm disdain. "A very superior mind hers," whispered the Colonel to Carr Vipont. "She'll never marry a fool."