Page:Memoirs of the Lady Hester Stanhope.djvu/45

 "'How do you do, Mr. K.?—how do you do, Lord Henry? I hope the marchioness is well? She looked divinely last night. Did you see her when she was dressed, Mr. K.?'—'You will pardon me, my lady,' answers the tutor, 'I did indeed see her; but it would be presumptuous in me to speak of such matters. I happened to take her a map,' (mind, doctor, he does not say a map of what) 'and, certainly, I did cast my eyes on her dress, which was, no doubt, in the best taste, as everything the Marchioness does is.' Observe, here is no mention of her looks or person. Doctors and tutors never presumed formerly to talk about the complexion, and skin, and beauty, of those in whose families they lived or found practice. Why, haven't I told you, over and over again, how Dr. Wlost his practice from having said that a patient of his, who died, was one of the most beautiful corpses he had ever seen, and that he had stood contemplating her for a quarter of an hour: she was a person of rank, and it ruined him. Even his son, who was a doctor too, and had nothing to do with it, never could get on afterwards.

"Then would come in some young lady with her governess, and then another; and the old dowager would take us all off to some show, and make the person who exhibited it stare again with the number of young nobility she brought with her. From the