was a
competent guest, giving as much entertainment as she received, being
of those who contribute as efficiently indirectly, as directly, to
conversation, and are normally involved in one of those skirmishes of
the heart, that cannot be described as engagements, but that, none the
less, invest their heroines with an atmosphere of respect, and provide
hostesses with subjects of anxiety and interest. At an early age,
Christian was promoted by her elder sister to the position of
confidante, and justified the promotion by the happy mixture of
sympathy and cynicism with which she received the confidences. She was
now well versed in the brief passions that, beginning at the second or
third dance of a regimental ball, would, like some night-flowering
tropic blossom, arrive at full splendour by supper time, and would
expire languorously, to the strains of "God save the King." Christian,
though young, was, as had been said, a capable audience. She could
listen, with the severe and youthful grace that seemed to set her a
little apart from others of her standing, to the feats of Judith and
her fellow-blackguards, savouring and appraising the absurdities, and
her comments upon them were offered with a sympathetic and skilled
comprehension that excused her in Judith's eyes for her lack of
ambition to emulate them.

Dick Talbot-Lowry had ceased to boast of the predominance of the
masculine gender among his offsprings, and rarely alluded to his sons
without coupling with their names a vigorous statement of how far in
excess of their value was their cost, usually ending with an enquiry
into the dark rulings of Providence, who had bestowed an expensive
family with one hand, and with the other had taken away the means of
supporting it. Dick was sixty-four now, an unhappy moment in a dashing
and artless career, with the shadow of advancing old age blighting and
reproving the still ardent enjoyment of the pleasures of youth.

"I'm an old man now!" Dick would say, without either feeling or
meaning it, and would bitterly resent the failure of his sons to
contradict a statement with which they were in complete agreement.
Only Christian, "of all his halls had nursed," tried to maintain her
father in a good conceit of himself, and to "rise his heart"; but
there are few hearts for which it is more difficult to perform that
office than the heart of a man, who, having ever (as King David says)
taken pleasure in the strength of horses, and deli