"Very well," continued Vivian, "come down with me next week, and you can send your horses with Steevens and my stud. The governor could mount you well enough, but I never hunt with so much pleasure as when I'm on Qui Vive; so I dare say you, like me, prefer your own horses. I only hope we shan't have a confounded 'black frost;' but we must take our chance of the weather. I think you'll like my sisters; they're just about half my age. Lots of children came in between, but were providentially nipped in the bud."
"Can't say, really; I'm too used to them to judge. I can't make love to them, so I never took the trouble to criticise them; but we've always been a good-looking race, I believe. I tell you who's staying there--that girl we met in Toronto. Do you remember her--Cecil St. Aubyn?"
"I should say I did. How did she get here?"
"She's come to live with her aunt, Mrs. Coverdale. You know that over-dressed widow who lives in Hyde Park gardens, and, when she can't afford Brighton, shuts the front shutters, lives in the back drawing-room, and says, 'Not at home to callers?' St. Aubyn is as poor as a rat, so I suppose he was glad to send Cecil here; and the Coverdale likes to have somebody who'll draw men to her parties, which I'm sure her champagne will never do. It's the most unblushing gooseberry ever ticketed 'Veuve Clicquot.'"
"'Pon my life, I'm delighted to hear it," said I. "The St. Aubyn's superb eyes will make the gooseberry go down. Men in Canada would have swallowed cask-washings to get a single waltz with her. All Toronto went mad on that score. You admired her, too, old fellow, only you weren't with her long enough for such a stoic as you are to boil up into anything warmer."
"Oh yes, I thought her extremely pretty, but I thought her a little flirt, nevertheless."
"Stuff! An attractive girl can't make herself ugly or disagreeable, or erect a brick wall round herself, with iron spikes on the top, for fear, through looking at her, any fellow might come to grief. The men followed her, and she couldn't help that."
"And she encouraged them, and she _could_ help that. However, I don't wish to speak against her; it's nothing to me how she kills and slays, provided I'm not among the bag. Take care you don't get shot yourself, Ned."