"Of course, mother. No one would dream of doubting it."
"Well, perhaps not, Arthur; but you're such a recluse, you know, that you're scarcely a judge of these things--one does not know what people won't say. The world is so full of envy and jealousy, and all that, I'm sure my position in regard to the matter is any thing but an agreeable one. Here I am, having to act _chaperon_ to this girl, who is known now as an heiress; and all kinds of men paying her attention, simply on account of her wealth. What I suffer when we're out together, you can't conceive. Every night, wherever we may be, there is a certain set of men always hanging about her, waiting for an introduction--persons whose acquaintance cannot do her the slightest good, and with whom she is yet quite as willing to talk or to dance as she is with he most available _parti_ in London."
Caterham smiled again. "You forget, mother, that she's not accustomed to the kind of life--"
"No; I don't forget anything of the kind, Arthur. It is her not being accustomed to it that is my greatest trouble. She is as raw as a child of seventeen Aft her first drawing-room. If she had any _savoir faire_, any knowledge of society, I should be perfectly at ease. A girl of any appreciation would know how to treat these people in an instant. Why, I know myself, that when I was far younger than Miss Maurice, I should have felt a kind of instinctive warning against two-thirds of the men with whom Annie Maurice is as talkative and as pleasant as though they were really persons whose acquaintance it was most desirable that she should make."
"And yet Annie is decidedly a clever girl."
"So much the worse, Arthur,--so much the worse. The more reason that she is utterly unlikely to possess or to be able readily to acquire the peculiar knowledge which would fit her to act under the circumstances of which I am speaking. Your clever people--such at least as are called clever by you and those whom you cultivate--are precisely the people who act idiotically in worldly affairs, who either know nothing or who set at defiance the _convenances_ of society, and of whom nothing can be made. That man--no, let me give you an example--that man who dined here last Thursday on your invitation--Professor Somebody, wasn't he?--Ive heard of him at that place where they give the scientific lectures in Albemarle Street--was any thing ever seen like his cravat, or his shoes, or the way in which he ate his soup?--he trod on my dress twice in going down to dinner, and I heard perfectly plainly what Lady Clanronald said to that odious Mr. Beauchamp Hogg about him."