per, had a ballet-girl for her mamma, or something
detrimental. An attractive woman is the target for all her sex to shoot
their sneers at, and if the poor thing isn't so riddled with arrows that
she's no beauty left, it isn't her sisters' fault."

"I believe you," said Telfer. "My gauge of a woman's fascinations is the
amount of hatred all the others bear her. It often amuses me to hear the
tone that ladies take in talking of some girl whom we admire. She's a
charming creature--a darling--their particular friend but ... there's
always a 'but' to neutralize the praise, and with their honeyed hatred
they contrive to damn the luckless object irretrievably. If another
man's a good shot, or whip, or billiard-player, we're not spiteful to
him for it. We think him a good fellow, and like him the better; but the
dear _beau sexe_ cannot bear a rival, and never rest while one of their
acquaintance has diamonds a carat larger, dresses a trifle more costly,
has finer horses, or more conquests. The only style of friend I ever
heard women speak well of is some plain and timorous individual,
good-natured to foolery, and weak as water, who never comes in their
orbit, and whom we never look at; and then what a darling she is, and
how eloquently they will laud her to the skies, despising her miserably
all the while for not having been born pretty!"

"True enough," Marc began. "Why do the Carterets treat the Tressillian
so disagreeably?--only because, though without their fortune, she makes
ten times their coups; and get themselves up how they may, they know
none of us care to waltz with them if she's in the room. Let's drink her
health in Marcobrunnen--she's magnificent eyes."

"And first-rate style," said I.

"And a deuced pretty foot," cried Fred.

"_Et une taille superbe_," added de Tintiniac, just come in. "_En
verite, elle est chouette cette Violette Anglaise._"

So we chanted the Tressillian's praises. Telfer drank the toast in
silence--_I_ thought with a frown on his brow at the freedom with which
we discussed his fair foe.

Little Countess Virginie's wedding was to come off in another month, and
Marc begged us so hard to stay on till then, that, Telfer seeming very
willing, I consented, though it would be the first September I had ever
spent out of the English open since I was old enough to know partridges
from pheasants. The Tressillian being Virginie's pet friend, after young
ladies' custom of contracting eternal allian