g, you can see; she can scarcely write her
own name. She has no conversation, I happen to know, for I met her
once at dinner, and she cannot by any chance put an 'H' into its right
place. Yet men see something in her that is totally inexplicable to
us, and she seems to have a mysterious influence over all ages and all
sorts. One of these infatuated noblemen is decrepit and twaddling; the
other a stern, reserved man that up to forty years of age was supposed
to be the very impersonation of common sense; and the third, young,
clever, and handsome, a man that might marry half the nicest women in
England if he liked. And why, do you think, she won't pick and choose
from such a trio? Why, forsooth, because she has set her stupid heart
on a drunken stockbroker, who won't have a word to say to her, and
would have been here to-day, I have no doubt, if he hadn't been afraid
of meeting _her_. Well, there's a stranger story than _that_ about the
girl with long fair hair in the next carriage. You can see her now, in
a pink bonnet, drinking sherry and soda water. It is supposed that she
is old Goldfinch's daughter, and that he won't give her a farthing;
but I know somebody who knows his lawyer, and that girl _will_ have
half a million, if she don't drink herself to death before old
Goldfinch takes his departure from this wicked world. She is beautiful
and clever and accomplished, and all the young men are in love with
her; but she cannot keep sober, and in three years' time she will have
lost her youth and her health and her faculties, and in all
probability will finish in a madhouse. There's Frank Lovell making
fierce love to her now."

And as Mrs. Lumley concluded with this amiable remark, I looked round
for Cousin John, and rode away from her in disgust at her flippancy,
and sick at heart to think of such a man as Captain Lovell wasting his
smiles on such a creature. To be sure, he only said three words to
her, for when I looked round again at the carriage he was gone. There
is something very amusing to me in the bustle of a racecourse; and
yet, after talking to Mrs. Lumley, the gloss seemed to be only on the
surface. She had told me enough of the company to make me fancy there
must be some strange history belonging to each. Like the man that saw
through the roofs of the houses in Madrid, thanks to the agency of his
familiar, I thought that my demon on a side-saddle had taught me to
see into the very hearts and secrets of the mot