Lady Hilda. "She is very good-natured; but her talking is ———!"
"She is an admirable heavy dragoon—manqué, said the Duc. "Most good-natured, as you say, but trying to the tympanum and the taste. So Clairvaux left last night?"
"Yes: Cheviot was taken ill."
"I should have thought it was a racer taken ill by the consternation he seemed to be in, I saw him for a moment only."
She was silent, watching the whirling of the pierrots, harlequins, scaramouches and dominoes, who were shrieking and yelling in the throng below.
"I think he liked his shooting with Paolo?" said the Duc, at a hazard.
"He likes shooting anywhere."
"Certainly there is something wrong," thought the Duc, stooping a little to look at her brocaded white lilies. "What an exquisite toilette!—is one permitted to say so?"
"Oh dear, no!" said the Lady Hilda petutantly. "The incessant talk about dress is so tiresome and so vulgar; the women who want
