Reduced to the plain expression of what it is really worth, the average English idea of beauty in women may be summed up in three words—­youth, health, plumpness.  The more spiritual charm of intelligence and vivacity, the subtler attraction of delicacy of line and fitness of detail, are little looked for and seldom appreciated by the mass of men in this island.  It is impossible otherwise to account for the extraordinary blindness of perception which (to give one instance only) makes nine Englishmen out of ten who visit France come back declaring that they have not seen a single pretty Frenchwoman, in or out of Paris, in the whole country.  Our popular type of beauty proclaims itself, in its fullest material development, at every shop in which an illustrated periodical is sold.  The same fleshy-faced girl, with the same inane smile, and with no other expression whatever, appears under every form of illustration, week after week, and month after month, all the year round.  Those who wish to know what Mrs. Glenarm was like, have only to go out and stop at any bookseller’s or news-vendor’s shop, and there they will see her in the first illustration, with a young woman in it, which they discover in the window.  The one noticeable peculiarity in Mrs. Glenarm’s purely commonplace and purely material beauty, which would have struck an observant and a cultivated man, was the curious girlishness of her look and manner.  No stranger speaking to this woman—­who had been a wife at twenty, and who was now a widow at twenty-four—­would ever have thought of addressing her otherwise than as “Miss.”

“Is that the use you make of a flower when I give it to you?” she said to Geoffrey.  “Mumbling it in your teeth, you wretch, as if you were a horse!”

“If you come to that,” returned Geoffrey, “I’m more a horse than a man.  I’m going to run in a race, and the public are betting on me.  Haw! haw!  Five to four.”

“Five to four!  I believe he thinks of nothing but betting.  You great heavy creature, I can’t move you.  Don’t you see I want to go like the rest of them to the lake?  No! you’re not to let go of my arm!  You’re to take me.”

“Can’t do it.  Must be back with Perry in half an hour.”

(Perry was the trainer from London.  He had arrived sooner than he had been expected, and had entered on his functions three days since.)

“Don’t talk to me about Perry!  A little vulgar wretch.  Put him off.  You won’t?  Do you mean to say you are such a brute that you would rather be with Perry than be with me?”

“The betting’s at five to four, my dear.  And the race comes off in a month from this.”

“Oh! go away to your beloved Perry!  I hate you.  I hope you’ll lose the race.  Stop in your cottage.  Pray don’t come back to the house.  And—­mind this!—­don’t presume to say ‘my dear’ to me again.”

“It ain’t presuming half far enough, is it?  Wait a bit.  Give me till the race is run—­and then I’ll presume to marry you.”