Page:Cerise, a tale of the last century (IA cerisetaleoflast00whytrich).pdf/363

 struggle; for in the last as in the present century, detraction claimed a fair fling at all new-comers, and not what they were, but who they were, was the important question amongst a provincial aristocracy, who made up by minute inquiry for the limited sphere of their research. At first people whispered that the husband was an adventurer and the wife an actress. Well, if not an actress, at least a dancing-girl, whom he had picked up in Spain, in Paris, in the West Indies, at Tangiers, Tripoli, or Japan! Lady Hamilton's beauty, her refined manners, her exquisite dresses, warranted the meanest opinion of her in the minds of her own sex; and although, when they could no longer conceal from themselves that she was a Montmirail of the real Montmirails, they were obliged to own she had at least the advantage of a high birth, I doubt if they loved her any better than before. They pitied Sir George, they said, one and all—"He, if you like, was charming. He had been page to the great King; he had been adored by the ladies of the French Court; he had killed a Prince of the Blood in a duel; he had sacked a convent of Spanish nuns, and wore the rosary of the Lady Abbess under his waistcoat; he had been dreadfully wicked, but he was so polite! he had the bel air; he had the tourneur Louis Quatorze; he had the manners of the princes, and the electors, and the arch-*dukes now passing away. Such men would be impossible soon; and to think he could have been entrapped by that tawdry Frenchified Miss, with her airs and graces, her fans and furbelows, and yards of the best Mechlin lace on the dress she went gardening in! It was nothing to them, of course, that the man should have committed such an absurdity; but, in common humanity, they could not help being sorry for it, and, unless they were very much deceived, so was he!"

With the squires, again, and county grandees of the male sex, including two or three baronets, a knight of the shire, and the lord-lieutenant himself, it was quite different. These honest gentlemen, whether fresh or fasting in the morning, or bemused with claret towards the afternoon, prostrated themselves before Cerise, and did homage to her charms. Her blue eyes, her rosy lips, the way her gloves fitted, the slender proportions of her feet, the influence of