"You really are too bad, Isabel!" said Lady Farley severely, "Lord Wrexham is a peer, and one of the best matches in London; and yet you treat him as badly as if you were marrying him for love. It is very incorrect and improvident of you."
Isabel opened her blue eyes very wide. "You don't have to make love to him for three hours and more at a stretch, or you would not talk about him in that careless and happy way. I confess that the excellent man's wealth and rank and virtue are unequalled—save, perhaps, by his dulness; but, believe me, there is only one thing on earth more fatiguing than talking to Wrexham, and that is listening to him. Take this as a wrinkle from one who knows."
"You should adapt yourself to him, my dear; it does not do for a man to know that a woman is cleverer than he is."
"He doesn't know it; I do, but I have never let him find it out. And as for adapting myself—why, my dear aunt, if you heard me talk to him you would take me for a land-agent or a farm-labourer."
"Hardly," said Lady Farley, who was lazily looking through her list of engagements for the day.
"Yes, you would. Personally I prefer talking about hearts and souls and ideals, to discussing silos and reaping-machines and land-bills; but Wrexham dotes upon the latter, so on the latter does my nimble tongue run. Adaptability is my strong point, don't you know?"
"And your weak point too, my child. You are so exactly what people want you to be, that nobody knows what the real you is like."
"Ah! but I know, more's the pity!"
"Then you know more than I do."
"Yes, I am wonderfully adaptable; in fact I have reduced adaptability to a science; I always make myself five years younger and one degree less intelligent than the man who takes me in to dinner; that is why I am so popular."