"The very way in which she says 'Oh, Camelia!' is flattering to the girl. Her mother's half-shocked admiration encourages her in the belief that she is very naughty and very clever; and really while Camelia talks Lady Paton looks like a hare under a bramble."
The simile hit the mark so nicely that the alarmed retirement of Lady Paton's attitude was pictorially apparent forthwith. And, "Ah, well!" Mrs. Jedsley added, "What can one expect in the child of such a father! The most gracefully selfish man who ever lived. Charles Paton would have smiled you out of house and home, and left you to sit in the snow, while he warmed himself at your fireplace."
Indeed this application of the laws of heredity might have induced a certain charitable philosophy on Camelia's behalf. The love of adventure, of prowess, of power, had shown itself in Charles Paton; but much had been forgiven--even admired--with a sense of breathlessness, in a cloud-compelling younger son (his good looks had been altogether supreme), which, when seen flaunting indecorously in the daughter, was highly unpopular. Charles Paton at a very early age had found the family traditions "devilish dull" (and, indeed, it could not be denied that dull they were); he entered the army, kicked over the traces, and was "wild" with all his might and main. Clievesbury disapproved, but at the same time Clievesbury was dazzled.
Surrounded by this naughty atmosphere, reverberating with racing and betting, dare-devil big-game shooting, and the extreme fashion that is supposed to reverse the "devilish dull" morality of tradition, Charles Paton--like his daughter--returned to Clievesbury, and there fell most magnanimously and becomingly in love with little Miss Fairleigh, the eighth daughter of a country baronet--a softly pink and white maiden--wooed and married her and settled down, after a fashion, to carve out an army career for himself. He carved to good purpose, luck giving him the opportunity. He carried his life as lightly and gallantly as a flag; sought peril, and the tingling excitement of the strangest feats. His reckless bravery won him a knighthood; his fame, his happy good-nature, and extreme good looks, made him a hero wherever he went. Charles Paton's yellow curls, his smile, the Apollo-like line of his lips, were as well known as his martial exploits.