sures of French fiction, French cookery, and
French _esprit_ when she could get it.

Dorian was one of her special favourites, and she always told him that
she was extremely glad she had not met him in early life. "I know, my
dear, I should have fallen madly in love with you," she used to say,
"and thrown my bonnet right over the mills for your sake. It is most
fortunate that you were not thought of at the time. As it was, our
bonnets were so unbecoming, and the mills were so occupied in trying to
raise the wind, that I never had even a flirtation with anybody.
However, that was all Narborough's fault. He was dreadfully
short-sighted, and there is no pleasure in taking in a husband who never
sees anything."

Her guests this evening were rather tedious. The fact was, as she
explained to Dorian, behind a very shabby fan, one of her married
daughters had come up quite suddenly to stay with her, and, to make
matters worse, had actually brought her husband with her. "I think it is
most unkind of her, my dear," she whispered. "Of course I go and stay
with them every summer after I come from Homburg, but then an old woman
like me must have fresh air sometimes, and besides, I really wake them
up. You don't know what an existence they lead down there. It is pure
unadulterated country life. They get up early, because they have so much
to do, and go to bed early because they have so little to think about.
There has not been a scandal in the neighbourhood since the time of
Queen Elizabeth, and consequently they all fall asleep after dinner. You
shan't sit next either of them. You shall sit by me, and amuse me."

Dorian murmured a graceful compliment, and looked round the room. Yes:
it was certainly a tedious party. Two of the people he had never seen
before, and the others consisted of Ernest Harrowden, one of those
middle-aged mediocrities so common in London clubs who have no enemies,
but are thoroughly disliked by their friends; Lady Ruxton, an
over-dressed woman of forty-seven, with a hooked nose, who was always
trying to get herself compromised, but was so peculiarly plain that to
her great disappointment no one would ever believe anything against
her; Mrs. Erlynne, a pushing nobody, with a delightful lisp, and
Venetian-red hair; Lady Alice Chapman, his hostess's daughter, a dowdy
dull girl, with one of those characteristic British faces, that, once
seen, are never remembered; and her husband, a red-cheeked,
white-whiskered