‘I cannot bear to hear you speak of yourself in that way.’

’But it is true.  I know the sort of girl he should marry.  In the first place she should be two years younger, and four years fresher.  She should be able not only to like him and love him, but to worship him.  How well I can see her!  She should have fair hair, and bright green-grey eyes, with the sweetest complexion, and the prettiest little dimples;—­two inches shorter than me, and the delight of her life should be to hang with two hands on his arm.  She should have a feeling that her Silverbridge is an Apollo upon earth.  To me he is a rather foolish, but very, very sweet-tempered young man;—­anything rather than a god.  If I thought that he would get the fresh young girl with the dimples then I ought to abstain.’

‘If he was in earnest,’ said Miss Cassewary, throwing aside all this badinage and thinking of the main point, ’if he was in earnest he will come again.’

‘He was quite in earnest.’

‘Then he will come again.’

‘I don’t think he will,’ said Lady Mabel.  ’I told him that I was too old for him, and I tried to laugh him out of it.  He does not like being laughed at.  He was been saved, and he will know it.’

‘But if he should come again?’

’I shall not spare him again.  No;—­not twice.  I felt it to be hard to do so once, because I so nearly love him!  There are so many of them who are odious to me, as to whom the idea of marrying them seems to be mixed somehow with an idea of suicide.’

‘Oh, Mabel!’

’But he is as sweet as a rose.  If I were his sister, or his servant, or his dog, I could be devoted to him.  I can fancy that his comfort and his success and his name should be everything to me.’

‘That is what a wife ought to feel.’

’But I could never feel him to be my superior.  That is what a wife ought to feel.  Think of those two young men and the difference between them!  Well;—­don’t look like that at me.  I don’t often give way, and I dare say after all I shall live to be the Duchess of Omnium.’  Then she kissed her friend and went away to her own room.

CHAPTER 21

Sir Timothy Beeswax

There had lately been a great Conservative reaction in the country, brought about in part by the industry and good management of gentlemen who were strong on that side;—­but due also in part to the blunders and quarrels of their opponents.  That these opponents should have blundered and quarrelled, being men active and in earnest, was to have been expected.  Such blunderings and quarrellings have been a matter of course since politics have been politics, and since religion has been religion.  When men combine to do nothing, how should there be disagreement?  When men combine to do much, how should there not be disagreement?  Thirty men can sit still, each as like the other as peas.  But put your thirty men up to run a race, and they will soon assume different forms.  And in doing nothing, you can hardly do amiss.  Let the does of nothing have something of action forced upon them, and they, too, will blunder and quarrel.