r idol were proved
human she would be very angry. She reflects that she will have Dodo and
the children kept more strictly in the school-room, and not let them
wander about over the park as they do with their Russian friend most
mornings.

"One can never be too careful with children of that age," she muses,
"and they are terribly _eveillees_ already."

Dorothy Usk's friendships, though very ardent, are like most friendships
which exist in society: they are apt to blow about with every breeze.
She is cordial, kind, and in her way sincere; but she is what her
husband characterizes as "weathercocky."

Who is not "weathercocky" in the world?

Although so tolerant in appearance of naughty people, because it is the
fashion to be so, and not to be so looks priggish and dowdy and odd, she
never at the bottom of her heart likes her naughty people. She has run
very straight herself, as her lord would express it; she has been always
much too busy to have time or inclination to be tempted "off the rails,"
and she has little patience with women who have gone off them; only she
never says so, because it would look so goody-goody and stupid, and for
fear of looking so she even manages to stifle in her own breast her own
antipathy to Dulcia Waverley.

There have been very many martyrs to the sense that they ought to smile
at virtue when they hate it, but Dorothy Usk's martyrdom is of a
precisely opposite kind: she forces herself to seem to approve the
reverse of virtue whilst she detests it. Anything is better, in her
creed, than looking odd; and nowadays you do look so odd and so
old-fashioned if you make a fuss about anything. Still, in her heart of
hearts she feels excessively vexed, because it is quite apparent to her
that Gervase knows something very much to the disadvantage of her new
acquaintance.

"George will be so delighted if he finds out that Madame Sabaroff is
like all those horrid women he is so fond of," she reflects. "I shall
never hear the last of it from him. It will be a standing joke for him
the whole of his life."

Certainly Madame Sabaroff is letting Brandolin carry on with her more
than is altogether proper. True, they are people who may marry each
other if they please, but Brandolin is not a man who marries, and his
attentions are never likely to take that form. He probably pays so much
court to Madame Sabaroff because he has heard that of her which leads
him to suppose that his efforts may be _couronne