"Oh, that was enough! To tell a young woman that a man is a villain is the surest way to awaken her interest in him. It is only at my age that one comes to understand that the man everybody abuses is no better than the common herd."
"And I let him come and go in quite an easy way, as if he had been a cousin, and we played concertante duets sometimes, in wet weather."
"And people found him here, and saw him with you out-of-doors, and they were talking about you last season, though you didn't know it. You are too handsome and too rich to escape. The women envy you your looks; the men envy you your income."
"You are not to suppose I ever cared about Colonel Rannock. I liked his playing, and his conversation amused me—and the more people told me that the Rannocks were unprincipled and disreputable, the more determined I was to be civil to him. One gets so tired of the good people who have never done wrong; and one doesn't take much account of a man's morals when he's only an acquaintance."
"That's just what my daughter would say. Goodness and badness with her are only differences in the measurement of the cerebrum. She'd consort with an escaped murderer if she thought him clever. Well, my dear child, you must come to my ball on the fifteenth of June. I am told it will be the event of the season, though there's to be no ruinous fancy-dress nonsense, not even powdered heads, only a white frock and all your diamonds. I am asking everybody to wear white, and I shall have a mass of vivid colour in the decorations, banks of gloxinias, every shade of purple and crimson, and orange-coloured Chinese lanterns, like that picture of Sargent's that we once raved about. You will all look like sylphs."
"Dear Marchioness, it will be a delicious ball. I know how you do things. But I can cross no one's threshold till my character is cleared. My character! Good Heavens, that I should live to talk of my character, like a housemaid!"
"Won't you come—in a white frock—and all your diamonds? They would cringe to you. I know what they are—the silly sheep! You see, they are good enough to call me a leader, and when they see you at my party, and Morningside walking about with you, they'll know what fools they've been."
"Dear Marchioness, you have a heart of gold! But I must right myself. I must do it off my own bat, as the men say."
"You're a pig-headed puss! Perhaps you'll think better of it between now and the fifteenth—nearly a month. I want to have all the pretty people. And you are a prime favourite of my husband's. If duelling weren't out of date I should fear for his life. I'm sure he'd be for shootin' somebody on your account."