A remark that showed Lady Marabout a skilful tactician, insomuch as it silenced Cecil—a performance rather difficult of accomplishment.
"I am very glad I gave the order to Mason," thought that good lady. "I only wish we did not meet the man in society; but it is impossible to help that. We are all cards of one pack, and get shuffled together, whether we like it or not. I wish Philip would pay her more attention; he admires her, I can see, and he can make any woman like him in ten days when he takes the trouble; but he is so tiresome! She would be exactly suited to him; she has all he would exact—beauty, talent, good blood, and even fortune, though that he would not need. The alliance would be a great happiness to me. Well, he dines here to-night, and he gives that concert at his barracks to-morrow morning, purely to please Cecil, I am sure. I think it may be brought about with careful management."
With which pleasant reflection she went to drive in the Ring, thinking that her maternal and duenna duties would be alike well fulfilled, and her chaperone's career well finished, if by any amount of tact, intrigue, finesses, and diplomacy she could live to see Cecil Ormsby sign herself Cecil Carruthers.
"If that man were only out of town!" she thought, as Cheveley passed them in Amandine's mail-phaeton at the turn.
Lady Marabout might wish Cheveley were out of town—and wish it devoutly she did—but she wasn't very likely to have her desire gratified till the general migration should carry him off in its tide to the deck of a yacht, a lodge in the Highlands, a German Kursaal, or any one of those myriad "good houses" where nobody was so welcome as he, the best shot, the best seat, the best wit, the best billiard-player, the best whist-player, and the best authority on all fashionable topics, of any man in England. Cheveley used to aver that he liked Lady Marabout, though she detested him; nay, that he liked her for her detestation; he said it was cordial, sincere, and refreshing, therefore a treat in the world of Belgravia; still, he didn't like her so well as to leave Town in the middle of May to oblige her; and though he took her hint as it was meant, and pulled up his hansom no more at her door, he met her and Rosediamond's daughter at dinners, balls, concerts, morning-parties innumerable. He saw them in the Ring; he was seen by them at the Opera; he came across them constantly in the gyration of London life. Night after night Lady Cecil persisted in writing his name in her tablets; evening after evening a bizarre fate worried Lady Marabout, by putting him on the left hand of her priceless charge at a dinner-party. Day after day all the harmony of a concert was marred to her ear by seeing her Ogre talking of Beethoven and Mozart, chamber music and bravura music in Cecil's: morning after morning gall was poured into her luncheon sherry, and wormwood mingled in her vol-au-vent, by being told, with frank mischief, by her desired daughter-in-law, that she "had seen Mr. Cheveley leaning on the rails, smoking," when she had taken her after-breakfast canter.
"Chandos Cheveley getting up before noon! He must mean something unusual!" thought her chaperone.
"Helena has set her heart on securing Cecil Ormsby for Carruthers. I hope she may succeed better than she did with poor Goodwood last season," laughed Lady Hautton, with her inimitable sneer, glancing at the young lady in question at a bazaar in Willis's Rooms, selling rosebuds for anything she liked to ask for them, and cigars tied up with blue ribbon a guinea the half-dozen, at the Marabout stall. Lady Hautton had just been paying a charitable visit to St. Cecilia's Refuge, of which she was head patroness, where, having floated in with much benignity, been worshipped by a select little toady troop, administered spiritual consolation with admirable condescension, and distributed illuminated texts for the adornment of the walls and refreshment of the souls, she was naturally in a Christian frame of mind towards her neighbors. Lady Marabout caught the remark—as she was intended to do—and thought it not quite a pleasant one; but, my good sir, did you ever know those estimable people, who spend all their time fitting themselves for another world, ever take the trouble to make themselves decently agreeable in the present one? The little pleasant courtesies, affabilities, generosities, and kindnesses, that rub the edge off the flint-stones of the Via Dolorosa, are quite beneath the attention of Mary the Saint, and only get attended to by Martha the Worldly, poor butterfly thing! who is fit for nothing more serviceable and profitable!
Lady Marabout had set her heart on Cecil Ormsby's filling that post of honor—of which no living woman was deserving in her opinion—that of "Philip's wife;" an individual who had been, for so many years, a fond ideal, a haunting anxiety, and a dreaded rival, en même temps, to her imagination. She was a little bit of a match-maker: she had, over and over again, arranged the most admirable and suitable alliances; alliances that would have shamed the scepticism of the world in general, as to the desirability of the holy bonds, and brought every refractory man to the steps of St. George's; alliances, that would have come off with the greatest éclat, but for one trifling hindrance and difficulty—namely, the people most necessary to the arrangements could never by any chance be brought to view them in the same light, and were certain to give her diplomacy the croc-en-jambe at the very moment of its culminating glory and finishing finesses. She was a little bit of a match-maker—most kind-hearted women are; the tinder they play with is much better left alone, but they don't remember that! Like children in a forest, they think they'll light a pretty bright fire, just for fun, and never remember what a seared, dreary waste that fire may make, or what a prairie conflagration it may stretch into before it's stopped.
"Cecil Ormsby is a terrible flirt," said Lady Hautton, to another lady, glancing at the rapid sale of the rosebuds and cigars, the bunches of violets and the sprays of lilies of the valley, in which that brilliant beauty was doing such thriving business at such extravagant profits, while the five Ladies Hautton presided solemnly over articles of gorgeous splendor, which threatened to be left on hand, and go in a tombola, as ignominiously as a beauty after half a dozen seasons, left unwooed and unwon, goes to the pêle-mêle raffle of German Bad society, and is sold off at the finish to an unknown of the Line, or a Civil Service fellow, with five hundred a year.
"Was Cecil a flirt?" wondered Lady Marabout. Lady Marabout was fain to confess to herself that she thought she was—nay, that she hoped she was. If it wasn't flirting, that way in which she smiled on Chandos Cheveley, sold him cigarettes, laughed with him over the ices and nectarines he fetched her, and positively invested him with the cordon d'honneur of a little bouquet of Fairy roses, for which twenty men sued, and he (give Satan his due) did not even ask—if it wasn't flirting, what was it? Lady Marabout shivered at the suggestion; and though she was, on principle, excessively severe on flirting, she could be very glad of what she didn't approve, when it aided her, on occasion—like most other people—and would so far have agreed with Talleyrand, as to welcome the worst crime (of coquetry) as far less a sin than the unpardonable blunder of encouraging an Ogre!