And Lady Marabout sighed with a prescience of coming troubles, while Carruthers laughed and rose.
"Will worry your life out! I must go, for I have to sit in court-martial at two (for a mere trifle, a deuced bore to us, but _le service oblige_!), so I shall escape introduction to your little Montolieu to-day. Why _will_ you fill your house with girls, my dear mother?--it is fifty times more agreeable when you are reigning alone. Henceforth, I can't come in to lunch with you without going through the formula of a mild flirtation--women think you so ill-natured if you don't flirt a little with them, that amiable men like myself haven't strength of mind to refuse. You should keep _your_ house an open sanctuary for me, when you know I've no other in London except when I retreat into White's and the U. S.!"
"She puzzles me!" pondered Lady Marabout, as Despréaux disrobed her that night. "I always _am_ to be puzzled, I think! I never _can_ have one of those quiet, mediocre, well-mannered, remarkable-for-nothing girls, who have no idiosyncrasies and give nobody any trouble; one marries them safely to some second-rate man; nobody admires them, and nobody dislikes them; they're to society what neutral tint is among body-colors, or rather what grays are among dresses, inoffensive, unimpeachable, always look ladylike, but never look brilliant; colorless dresses are very useful, and so are characterless girls; and I dare say the draper would tell us the grays in the long run are the easiest to sell, as the girls are to marry; they please the commonplace taste of the generality, and do for every-day wear! Flora Montolieu puzzles me; she is very charming, very striking, very lovable, but she puzzles me! I have a presentiment that that child will give me a world of anxiety, an infinitude of trouble!"
And Lady Marabout laid her head on her pillow, not the happier that Flora Montolieu was lying asleep in the room next her, dreaming of the wild-vine shadows and the night-blooming flowers of her native tropics, under the rose-curtains of her new home in Lowndes Square, already a burden on the soul and a responsibility on the mind of that home's most genial and generous mistress.
"If she were a man, I should certainly call her a detrimental," said Lady Marabout, after a more deliberate study of her charge. "You know, my dear Philip, the sort of man one call detrimental; attractive enough to do a great deal of damage, and ineligible enough to make the damage very unacceptable: handsome and winning, but a younger son, or a something nobody wants; a delightful flirtation, but a terrible alliance; you know what I mean! Well, that is just what this little Montolieu is in our sex; I am quite sure it is what she will be considered; and if it be bad for a man, it is very much worse for a woman! Everybody will admire her, and nobody will marry her; I have a presentiment of it!"