there. I say, what a
splendid creature Cissy Halkett has shot up! She topped the season this
year, and will next. You're for the darkies, Beauchamp. So am I, when I
don't see a blonde; just as a fellow admires a girl when there's no
married woman or widow in sight. And, I say, it can't be true you've gone
in for that crazy Radicalism? There's nothing to be gained by it, you
know; the women hate it! A married blonde of five-and-twenty's the Venus
of them all. Mind you, I don't forget that Mrs. Wardour-Devereux is a
thorough-paced brunette; but, upon my honour, I'd bet on Cissy Halkett at
forty. "A dark eye in woman," if you like, but blue and auburn drive it
into a corner.'

Lord Palmet concluded by asking Beauchamp what he was doing and whither
going.

Beauchamp proposed to him maliciously, as one of our hereditary
legislators, to come and see something of canvassing. Lord Palmet had no
objection. 'Capital opportunity for a review of their women,' he
remarked.

'I map the places for pretty women in England; some parts of Norfolk, and
a spot or two in Cumberland and Wales, and the island over there, I know
thoroughly. Those Jutes have turned out some splendid fair women.
Devonshire's worth a tour. My man Davis is in charge of my team, and he
drives to Itchincope from Washwater station. I am independent; I 'll have
an hour with you. Do you think much of the women here?'

Beauchamp had not noticed them.

Palmet observed that he should not have noticed anything else.

'But you are qualifying for the Upper House,' Beauchamp said in the tone
of an encomium.

Palmet accepted the statement. 'Though I shall never care to figure
before peeresses,' he said. 'I can't tell you why. There's a heavy
sprinkling of the old bird among them. It isn't that. There's too much
plumage; I think it must be that. A cloud of millinery shoots me off a
mile from a woman. In my opinion, witches are the only ones for wearing
jewels without chilling the feminine atmosphere about them. Fellows think
differently.' Lord Palmet waved a hand expressive of purely amiable
tolerance, for this question upon the most important topic of human
affairs was deep, and no judgement should be hasty in settling it. 'I'm
peculiar,' he resumed. 'A rose and a string of pearls: a woman who goes
beyond that's in danger of petrifying herself and her fellow man. Two
women in Paris, last winter, set us on fire with pale thin gold
ornaments--neck, wrists, ears, ruche,