Lady Tyrrell accompanied her guests to their apartments, and Charles remained a moment or two before he himself retired to his own room. To him his father made no observation; but, almost as soon as the ladies were gone, he turned to Mr. Driesen, saying, "She is very beautiful indeed."
"Which do you mean," demanded Mr. Driesen; "the mother or the daughter?"
"Oh, I meant the daughter, of course," replied Sir Francis: "I had seen the mother often before; but I had no idea that Lucy, whom I remember a plain child, would have turned out so beautiful."
"She puts me in mind," said Mr. Driesen, in reply, "of a piece of French porcelain, all rosy, red, and clear white, and ultramarine blue."
There was a sneer upon his lip as he spoke, and Charles Tyrrell, who felt the simile to be unjust in everything but the mere terms, inasmuch as nothing could be more beautifully shaded and harmonized than the colouring of Lucy Effingham's complexion, turned round and quitted the drawing-room.
Immediately after he was gone, Sir Francis proceeded to read Mr. Driesen a lecture upon the impolicy of decrying Lucy Effingham's beauty, knowing, so well as he did, the project formed for uniting her to his son. "I can tell you, Driesen," he added, "that young man is harder to deal with than you know; to use the late King of Spain's expression, 'he is as obstinate as an Aragonese mule.'"
"My dear sir, he is your son!" replied Mr. Driesen, with a cynical bow; "but, begging your pardon, I said what I did quite advisedly. She is a great deal too pretty for him to acknowledge the justice of what I said. He is even now gone up to his room, not only excessively angry at me for saying it, but thinking Lucy Effingham ten times as beautiful as he did the minute before, simply because I compared her to a French flowerpot. He will, in all probability, dream of her all night, and will rise to-morrow morning fully prepared to tilt his wit against mine in her defence."
"Perhaps you are right," replied Sir Francis Tyrrell, "though you concealed your meaning so well that I did not perceive it: Latet anguis in herbâ Driesen, eh? I did not perceive the reptile under the flowerpot, though I might have known, too, that there must be a snake under any flowers that you choose to cull;" and thus, having repaid him for the rejoinder to the Aragonese mule, Sir Francis Tyrrell wished him good-night, and they mutually retired.