Small is her need to be young—­especially if it is the man who is very young.  She is the created among women armed with the deadly instinct for the motive force in men, and shameless to attract it.  Self-respecting women treat men as their tamed housemates.  She blows the horn of the wild old forest, irresistible to the animal.  O the droop of the eyelids, the curve of a lip, the rustle of silks, the much heart, the neat ankle; and the sparkling agreement, the reserve—­the motherly feminine petition that she may retain her own small petted babe of an opinion, legitimate or not, by permission of superior authority!—­proof at once of her intelligence and her appreciativeness.  Her infinitesimal spells are seen; yet, despite experience, the magnetism in their repulsive display is barely apprehended by sedate observers until the astounding capture is proclaimed.  It is visible enough then:—­and O men!  O morals!  If she can but trick the smallest bit in stooping, she has the pick of men.

Our present sample shows her to be young:  she is young and a foreigner.  Mr. Chumley Potts vouches for it.  Speaks foreign English.  He thinks her more ninny than knave:  she is the tool of a wily plotter, picked up off the highway road by Lord Fleetwood as soon as he had her in his eye.  Sir Meeson Corby wrings his frilled hands to depict the horror of the hands of that tramp the young lord had her from.  They afflict him malariously still.  The man, he says, the man as well was an infatuation, because he talks like a Dictionary Cheap Jack, and may have had an education and dropped into vagrancy, owing to indiscretions.  Lord Fleetwood ran about in Germany repeating his remarks.  But the man is really an accomplished violinist, we hear.  She dances the tambourine business.  A sister of the man, perhaps, if we must be charitable.  They are, some say, a couple of Hungarian gypsies Lord F. found at a show and brought over to England, and soon had it on his conscience that he ought to marry her, like the Quixote of honour that he is; which is equal to saying crazy, as there is no doubt his mother was.

The marriage is no longer disputable; poor Lady Fleetwood, whatever her faults as a step-mother, does no longer deny the celebration of a marriage; though she might reasonably discredit any such story if he, on the evening of the date of the wedding day, was at a Ball, seen by her at the supper-table; though it is admitted he left the Ball-room at night.  But the next day he certainly was in his place among the Peers and voted against the Government, and then went down to his estates in Wales, being an excellent holder of the reins, whether on the coach box or over the cash box.