Lord Linden always was at leisure, and always indifferent, and not unfrequently attached himself to Gaston de Bois, and seemed disposed to accompany him wherever he went.
His lordship was one of that vast race of blasé young noblemen whose opportunities of enjoyment had never been circumscribed, except by the absence of the capacity to enjoy, and who, as a natural sequence, were continually oppressed with a sense of satiety, enervated by the noonday sunshine of unbroken prosperity, and thoroughly weary of their own existence. When his brother-in-law had been appointed ambassador to America, he had accompanied him to the United States with a vague idea that he would be thrown in contact with warlike tribes of Indians, the aborigines of the soil, whose novel and barbarous usages might afford him some mediocre measure of excitement. We need hardly picture his disappointment.
The ambassadors from foreign courts and their suites were as a matter of course, thrown into constant communication with each other, and the secretary of the French ambassador and the brother-in-law of the English formed an acquaintance which ripened into an approach to intimacy. There was no particular affinity between them, but Lord Linden liked M. de Bois's society because he was a patient listener, and Lord Linden was the opposite to taciturn; and Gaston, though he sometimes, as in the present instance, felt his lordship an encumbrance, had too often been a victim to ennui not to sympathize with a fellow-sufferer.
"Mademoiselle de Merrivale has a remarkably attractive face," said Lord Linden. "I do not particularly fancy blondes; there is too much milk-and-water and crushed rose-leaves in their general make-up; but, if a blonde could, to my eyes, enter the charmed circle of the positively beautiful, I would give her admission."
Gaston, who had fallen into a pleasant revery, was quickly roused by this observation, and exclaimed, with an indignant intonation, "Not admit a blonde into the circle of the beautiful? Can anything be lovelier than the countenance you have just looked upon?"
"Yes," replied the nobleman, musing in his turn.
"I think I could show you a face that would make Mademoiselle de Merrivale's sink into the most utter insignificance."
"Is your beauty a Washington belle?" inquired Gaston, half-scornfully.
"I do not know,—I do not know anything about her. I merely spoke figuratively when I said I could show you,—for I certainly could not, at this moment; but I allude to the most peerless being that ever captivated the eyes of man. In her, indeed, one could realize the poet's thought,—