e 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."

Guy Darrell was very pleasant at "the small family dinnerparty." Carr
was always popular in his manners; the true old House of Commons manner,
which was very like that of a gentleman-like public school. Lady Selina,
as has been said before, in her own family circle was natural and
genial. Young Carr, there, without his wife, more pretentious than his
father,--being a Lord of the Admiralty,--felt a certain awe of Darrell,
and spoke little, which was much to his own credit and to the general
conviviality. The other members of the symposium, besides Lady Selina,
Honoria, and a younger sister, were but Darrell, Lionel, and Lady
Selina's two cousins;