Page:Eliot - Felix Holt, the Radical, vol. I, 1866.djvu/177

Rh remarkable appearance, but to most Trebians they seemed absolutely unique, and likely to be known anywhere. If you had looked down on them from the box of Sampson's coach, he would have said, after lifting his hat, "Sir Maximus and his lady—did you see?" thinking it needless to add the surname.

"We shall find her greatly elated, doubtless," Lady Debarry was saying. "She has been in the shade so long."

"Ah, poor thing!" said Sir Maximus. "A fine woman she was in her bloom. I remember the first county ball she attended we were all ready to fight for the sake of dancing with her. I always liked her from that time—I never swallowed the scandal about her myself."

"If we are to be intimate with her," said Lady Debarry, "I wish you would avoid making such allusions, Sir Maximus. I should not like Selina and Harriet to hear them."

"My dear, I should have forgotten all about the scandal, only you remind me of it sometimes," retorted the Baronet, smiling and taking out his snuff-box.

"These sudden turns of fortune are often dangerous to an excitable constitution," said Lady Debarry, not choosing to notice her husband's epigram. "Poor Lady Alicia Methurst got heart-disease from