"But you do not deny the South Sea heiress. You plead guilty to serious intentions," said Lady Polwhele, shaking her fan at his lordship in a kittenish manner.
"Gold and spices from southern seas have a pleasant sound, your ladyship," replied Lavendale easily, "and the young lady herself is as much too good for me as I am too bad for her."
"O, but a country-bred girl always doats upon a rake."
"'Tis only natural a rustic lass should be fond of making hay. I suppose it is that kind of innocent wooden rake your ladyship means. Gaudentem patrios findere sarculo agros."
"No, sir, a battered, hardened, brazen, half-ruined, infidel man of fashion," answered the dowager; "that is the object a country wench admires. If you are reformed, be sure you have spoiled your chances. You cannot be too wicked to please sweet simplicity. It is only experienced women of the world, like Lady Judith and me, who have a relish for virtue."
"And then only in the abstract, I'll be sworn," cried Asterley, coming to the tray for a second cup of chocolate, and devouring cakes out of a silver filigree basket. "You relish virtue in your Locke or your Addison—a stately preachment of morality in elegant Saxon-English, but you like a man to be—a man. There is Lord Bolingbroke, for instance. Is he not the highest example of manly perfection? Facile primus. An easy first in everything: first in pleasure, idleness, and debauchery, as he is first in learning, diplomacy, and statesmanship."
"And in lies and craft," said Lady Judith scornfully; "there he is—what do you call it?—primus inter primos. I would rather have Walpole for my type of manliness. A coarser stuff, if you will, but a far more honest fabric; no such mixture of gold and tinsel, strength and rottenness."
"I forgot that your ladyship belongs to the Whig faction," said Asterley.
"O, I tie myself to no politics. If the Chevalier were a MAN, I would rather have him to rule us than this little German king. But the little Hanoverian is at least honest, and has shown his mettle against the Turks, while the Stuarts are as false as they are feeble: ingrates to their friends and trucklers to their foes."
While she was speaking, there came a great ringing of the hall-bell, and the sound of a chair setting down outside; and then the double doors were opened, and between a lane of footmen Mr. Topsparkle sauntered in.