But meanwhile the elite of this jeunesse doree glittered round Flora Vyvyan: not a regular beauty like Lady Adela—not a fine girl like Miss Vipont, but such a light, faultless figure—such a pretty radiant face—more womanly for affection to be manlike—Hebe aping Thalestris. Flora, too, was an heiress—an only child—spoilt, wilful—not at all accomplished—(my belief is that accomplishments are thought great bores by the jeunesse doree)—no accomplishment except horsemanship, with a slight knack at billiards, and the capacity to take three whiffs from a Spanish cigarette. That last was adorable—four offers had been advanced to her hand on that merit alone.—(N.B. Young ladies do themselves no good with the jeunesse doree, which, in our time, is a lover that rather smokes than “sighs, like furnace,” by advertising their horror of cigars.) You would suppose that Flora Vyvyan must be coarse-vulgar perhaps; not at all; she was pignaute—original; and did the oddest things with the air and look of the highest breeding. Fairies cannot be vulgar, no matter what they do; they may take the strangest liberties—pinch the maids—turn the house topsy-turvy; but they are ever the darlings of grace and poetry. Flora Vyvyan was a fairy. Not peculiarly intellectual herself, she had a veneration for intellect; those fast young men were the last persons likely to fascinate that fast young lady. Women are so perverse; they always prefer the very people you would least suspect—the antithesis to themselves. Yet is it possible that Flora Vyvyan can have carried her crotchets to so extravagant a degree as to have designed the conquest of Guy Darrell—ten years older than her own father? She, too, an heiress—certainly not mercenary; she who had already refused better worldly matches than Darrell himself was—young men, handsome men, with coronets on the margin of their note-paper and the panels of their broughams! The idea seemed preposterous; nevertheless, Alban Morley, a shrewd observer, conceived that idea, and trembled for his friend.
At last the young lady and her satellites shot off, and the Colonel said cautiously, “Miss Vyvyan is—alarming.”
DARRELL.—“Alarming! the epithet requires construing.”
COLONEL MORLEY.—“The sort of girl who might make a man of our years really and literally an old fool!”
DARRELL.—“Old fool such a man must be if girls of any sort are permitted to make him a greater fool than he was before. But I think that, with those pretty hands resting on one’s arm-chair, or that sunny face shining into one’s study windows, one might be a very happy old fool—and that is the most one can expect!”
COLONEL MORLEY (checking an anxious groan).—“I am afraid, my poor friend, you are far gone already. No wonder Honoria Vipont fails to be appreciated. But Lady Selina has a maxim—the truth of which my experience attests—‘the moment it comes to woman, the most sensible men are the’—”
“Oldest fools!” put in Darrell. “If Mark Antony made such a goose of himself for that painted harridan Cleopatra, what would he have done for a blooming Juliet! Youth and high spirit! Alas! why are these to be unsuitable companions for us, as we reach that climax in time and sorrow—when to the one we are grown the most indulgent, and of the other have the most need? Alban, that girl, if her heart were really won—her wild nature wisely mastered, gently guided—would make a true, prudent, loving, admirable wife—”
“Heavens!” cried Alban Morley.
“To such a husband,” pursued Darrell, unheeding the ejaculation, “as—Lionel Haughton. What say you?” “Lionel—oh, I have no objection at all to that; but he’s too young yet to think of marriage—a mere boy. Besides, if you yourself marry, Lionel could scarcely aspire to a girl of Miss Vyvyan’s birth and fortune.”
“Ho, not aspire! That boy at least shall not have to woo in vain from the want of fortune. The day I marry—if ever that day come—I settle on Lionel Haughton and his heirs five thousand a-year; and if, with gentle blood, youth, good looks, and a heart of gold, that fortune does not allow him to aspire to any girl whose hand he covets, I can double it, and still be rich enough to buy a superior companion in Honoria Vipont—”