“It is easy enough to see why our straitlaced neighbours do not take to him,” said she; “he is too much a man of the world—too tolerant and forgiving for their notions.”
“A little too lax, also, for the proprieties of English life,” added Lady Vyner.
“For its hypocrisies, if you like, Laura. I’m certain people are pretty much the same everywhere, though the way they talk about themselves may be very different.”
“I suspect he has made a conquest, Georgy,” said her sister, laughing; “or rather, that his magnificent old castle, and his Vandykes, and his pineries, and his conservatory have——”
“No! that I protest against. His ‘accessories,’ as the French would call them, are undeniable. It is a house absolutely princely in all its details; but I think he himself is the gem of the collection. He is so courteous and so pleasant, so anecdotic, and so full of all manner of apropos, and then so utterly unlike every one else that one knows.”
“I suppose there lies his chief attraction. We have to measure him with people all whose thoughts and ideas are so essentially homely, and who must of necessity be eternally talking of themselves—that is, of their own turnpike, their own turnips, and their own cock pheasants.”
“Is it not strange that he never married?” said Georgina, after a silence.
“I don’t think so. He’s not a man that would be likely to marry, and very far from being one that a woman would like to take as a husband.”
“Do you think so—do you really think so?”
“I’m certain of it. All those charming little schemes for our entertainment that captivated us a while ago, show a degree of care and attention bestowed on little things which would make life a perfect servitude. Cannot you imagine him spending his mornings giving audience to his cook, and listening to the report of his gardener? I fancy I see him in the midst of a levee of domestics, gravely listening to the narrative of the last twenty-four hours of his household.”