"Well, tired of it, perhaps from hearing him praised so often, as the Athenian trader grew sick of Aristides, and the Jacobin of Washington's name. Is it unpardonably heterodox to say so?"
Lady Marabout stirred her coffee in perplexity:
"My dear child, pray don't speak in that way; that's like Philip's tone when he is enigmatical and sarcastic, and worries me. I really cannot in the least understand you about Lord Goodwood, it is quite incomprehensible to me. I thought I overheard him to-day at Lady George's concert speak very definitely to you indeed, and when he was interrupted by the Duchess before you could give him his reply, I thought I heard him say he should call to-morrow morning to know your ultimate decision. Was I right?"
"He really proposed marriage to you to-day?"
"And yet you say you are sick of his name?"
"Does it follow, imperatively, Lady Marabout, that because the Sultan throws his handkerchief, it must be picked up with humility and thanksgiving?" asked Flora Montolieu, furling and unfurling her fan with an impatient rapidity that threatened entire destruction of its ivory and feathers, with their Watteau-like group elaborately painted on them--as pretty a toy of the kind as could be got for money, which had been given her by Carruthers one day in payment of some little bagatelle of a bet.
"Sultan!--Humility!" repeated Lady Marabout, scarcely crediting her senses. "My dear Flora, do you know what you are saying? You must be jesting! There is not a woman in England who would be insensible to the honor of Goodwood's proposals. You are jesting, Flora!"
"You mean to say, you could positively think of _rejecting_ him!" cried Lady Marabout, rising from her chair in the intensity of her amazement, convinced that she was the victim of some horrible hallucination.
"_Why?_" repeated Lady Marabout, indignantly. "Do you ask me _why_? You must be a child, indeed, or a consummate actress, to put such a question; excuse me, my dear, if I speak a little strongly: you perfectly bewilder me, and I confess I cannot see your motives or your meaning in the least. You have made a conquest such as the proudest women in the peerage have vainly tried to make; you have one of the highest titles in the country offered to you; you have won a man whom everybody declared would never be won; you have done this, pardon me, without either birth or fortune on your own side, and then you speak of rejecting Goodwood--Goodwood, of all the men in England! You cannot be serious, Flora, or, if you are, you must be mad!"