Page:Memoirs of the Lady Hester Stanhope.djvu/99

 recollect it was at a party where Charles X. was present—I think it was at Lord Harrington's—that somebody said to me, 'Mr. wants to know you so much! Why won't you let him be introduced to you?'— Because I don't like people whose face is all oily, like a soap-ball,' answered I. Now, doctor, upon my word, I no more knew he had made his fortune by oil, than I do what was the colour of the paper in your saloon at Nice; and when his friend said, 'You are too bad, Lady Hester,' I did not understand what he meant. However, they told me there would be all the royalties there, and so I consented.

"I have had an instinct all my life that never deceived me, about people who were thorough-bred or not; I knew them at once. Why was it, when Mr. H*******n came into a room, and took a long sweep with his hat, and made a stoop, and I said: 'One would think he was looking under the bed for the great business;' and all the people laughed, and when at last Mr. Pitt said, 'Hester, you are too bad, you should not be personal,' I declared 'I did not know what he meant?' Then he explained to me that the man was a broken-down doctor, a fact which, I honestly assured him, I never heard of before. But my quickness in detecting people's old habits is so great, that I hit upon a thing without having the least previous intimation.

"As I passed the card-table that evening where the