at
anything.

"I have thought about it very often, I assure you," continues Brandolin,
"and sometimes I have really thought that I would marry a high-caste
Hindoo woman. They are very beautiful, and their forms far more
exquisite than any European's, wholly uncramped as they are by any
stays, and accustomed to spend so many hours on all kinds of arts for
the embellishment of the skin."

"I don't think, you know," Lady Usk interposes, hastily, to repress more
reminiscences, "that you need be afraid of the young girls of our time
being innocent: they are _eveillees_ enough, heaven knows, and
experienced enough in all conscience."

"Oh, but that is odious," says Brandolin, with disgust. "The girls of
the day are horrible; nothing is unknown to them; they smoke, they
gamble, they flirt without decency or grace, their one idea is to marry
for sake of a position which will let them go as wild as they choose,
and for the sake of heaps of money which will sustain their
unconscionable extravagance. Lord deliver me from any of them! I would
sooner see St. Hubert's Lea cut up into allotment-grounds than save it
from the Southesk-Vanes by marrying a _debutante_ with her mind fixed on
establishing herself, and her youthful memories already full of
dead-and-gone flirtations. No! let me wait for Dodo, if you will give me
permission to educate her."

"Dodo will never be educated out of flirting; she is born for it," says
her father, "and she will be a handful when she gets into society. I am
afraid you would return her to us and sigh for your high-caste Hindoo."

"Pray, how would you educate her? what is missing in her present
education?" asks Lady Usk, somewhat piqued at what he implies.

"I would let her see a great deal more of her mother than she is allowed
to do," says Brandolin: "where could she take a better model?" he adds,
with a bow of much grace.

Her mother is not sure whether she ought to be flattered or offended.
Brandolin has a way of mingling graceful compliments and implied censure
with so much skill and intricacy that to disentangle them is difficult
for those whom he would at once flatter and rebuff. "One never quite
knows what he means," she thinks, irritably. "I do believe he intends to
imply that I neglect my children!"

Brandolin seems to her an unpleasant man, eccentric, discourteous, and
immoral. She cannot imagine what George or the world sees to admire and
like so much in him.

"Lord Brandolin act