born to it.  They daren’t run a gamut, these women.  These Englishwomen are a fiction!  The model of them is the nursery-miss, but they’re like the names of true lovers cut on the bark of a tree—­awfully stiff and longitudinal with the advance of time.  We’ve our Lady Jezebels, my boy!  They’re in the pay of the bishops, or the police, to make vice hideous.  The rest do the same for virtue, and get their pay for it somewhere, I don’t doubt; perhaps from the newspapers, to keep up the fiction.  I tell you, these Englishwomen have either no life at all in them, or they’re nothing but animal life.  ’Gad, how they dizen themselves!  They’ve no other use for their fingers.  The wealth of this country’s frightful!’

Jorian seemed annoyed that he could not excite me to defend my countrywomen; but I had begun to see that there was no necessity for the sanguine to encounter the bilious on their behalf, and was myself inclined to be critical.  Besides I was engaged in watching my father, whose bearing toward the ladies he accosted did not dissatisfy my critical taste, though I had repeated fears of seeing him overdo it.  He summoned me to an introduction to the Countess Szezedy, a merry little Hungarian dame.

‘So,’ said she at once, speaking German, ’you are to marry the romantic head, the Princess Ottilia of Eppenwelzen!  I know her well.  I have met her in Vienna.  Schone Seele, and bas bleu!  It’s just those that are won with a duel.  I know Prince Otto too.’  She prattled away, and asked me whether the marriage was to take place in the Summer.  I was too astounded to answer.

‘No date is yet fixed,’ my father struck in.

‘It’s the talk of London,’ she said.

Before I could demand explanations of my father with regard to this terrible rumour involving Ottilia, I found myself in the box of the City widow, Lady Sampleman, a grievous person, of the complexion of the autumnal bramble-leaf, whose first words were:  ’Ah! the young suitor!  And how is our German princess?’ I had to reply that the theme was more of German princes than princesses in England.  ‘Oh! but,’ said she, ’you are having a—­shall I call it—­national revenge on them?  “I will take one of your princesses,” says you; and as soon as said done!  I’m dying for a sight of her portrait.  Captain DeWitt declares her heavenly—­I mean, he says she is fair and nice, quite a lady-that of course!  And never mind her not being rich.  You can do the decoration to the match.  H’m,’ she perused my features; ’pale!  Lovelorn?  Excuse an old friend of your father’s.  One of his very oldest, I’d say, if it didn’t impugn.  As such, proud of your alliance.  I am.  I speak of it everywhere—­everywhere.’

Here she dramatized the circulation of the gossip.  ’Have you heard the news?  No, what?  Fitz-George’s son marries a princess of the German realm.  Indeed!  True as gospel.  And how soon?  In a month; and now you will see the dear, neglected man command the Court . . . .’