The tint is carried on to the cheek, and adds brilliancy
to the eye. In duller weather a coral pin in the cravat will suffice;
but, as David Wilkie used to say, 'Nature must have her bit of red.'"

"I wish you would finish what you were saying about women, my Lord. Your
remarks were full of originality."

"Finish! finish, Cutty! It would take as many volumes as the
'Abridgement of the Statutes' to contain one-half of what I could say
about them; and, after all, it would be Sanscrit to you." His Lordship
now placed his hat on his head, slightly on one side. It was the
"tigerism" of a past period, and which he could no more abandon than he
could give up the jaunty swagger of his walk, or the bland smile which
he kept ready for recognition.

"I have not, I rejoice to say, arrived at that time of life when I can
affect to praise bygones; but I own, Cutty, they did everything much
better five-and-twenty years ago than now. They dined better, they
dressed better, they drove better, they turned out better in the field
and in the park, and they talked better."

"How do you account for this, my Lord?"

"Simply in this way, Cutty. We have lowered our standard in taste just
as we have lowered our standard for the army. We take fellows five feet
seven into grenadier companies now; that is, we admit into society men
of mere wealth,--the banker, the brewer, the railway director, and the
rest of them; and with these people we admit their ways, their tastes,
their very expressions. I know it is said that we gain in breadth; yet,
as I told Lord Cocklethorpe (the mot had its success),--what we gain in
breadth, said I, we lose in height. Neat, Cutty, was n't it? As neat as
a mot well can be in our clumsy language."

And with this, and a familiar "Bye-bye," he strolled away, leaving
Cutbill to practise before the glass such an imitation of him as might
serve, at some future time, to convulse with laughter a select and
admiring audience.

CHAPTER XI. A WINTER DAY'S WALK

Lord Culduff and Marion set out for their walk. It was a sharp frosty
morning, with a blue sky above and crisp snow beneath. We have already
seen that his Lordship had not been inattentive to the charms of
costume. Marion was no less so; her dark silk dress, looped over a
scarlet petticoat, and a tasteful hat of black astracan, well suited the
character of looks where the striking and brilliant were as conspicuous
as dark eyes, long lashes, and a bright comp