THE WORRIES OF A CHAPERONE;

OR,

LADY MARABOUT'S TROUBLES.

BY OUIDA.

SEASON THE THIRD.-THE DETRIMENTAL.

I.

LADY MARABOUT'S PUZZLE.

"My dear Philip, the most unfortunate thing has happened," said Lady Marabout, one morning; "really the greatest contretemps that could have occurred. I suppose I never am to be quiet!"

"What's the row now, madre carissima?" asked Carruthers, seating himself back in a dormeuse, tired with the heat, dust, and bore of a fieldday at Wormwood Scrubs, the first of that season, having sworn at the weight of his harness, lighted a cigar as he trotted homewards, and drunk Hock and seltzer to refresh himself afterwards, in common with the rest of the Blues.

"It is no row, but it is an annoyance. You have heard me speak of my poor dear friend Mrs. Montolieu; you know she married unhappily, poor thing, to a dreadful creature, colonel of a West India regimentnobody at all. It is very odd and it is very wrong, and there must be a great mistake somewhere, but certainly most marriages are unhappy.'

"And yet you are always recommending the institution! What an extraordinary obstinacy and opticism, my dear mother! I suppose you do it on the same principle as nurses recommend children nasty medicines, or as old Levett used to tender me dry biscuit sans confiture "Tisn't so nice as marmalade, I know, Master Philip, but then, dear, it's so wholesome!'

:

"Hold your tongue, Philip," cried Lady Marabout; "I don't mean it in that sense at all, and you know I don't. If poor Lilla Montolieu is unhappy, I am sure it is all her abominable odious husband's fault; she is the sweetest creature possible. But she has a daughter, and concerning that daughter she wrote to me about a month ago, and I never was more vexed in my life--she wants me to bring her out this season."

"A victim again! My poor dear mother, you certainly deserve a Belgravian testimonial; you shall have a statue set up in Lowndessquare commemorative of the heroic endurance of a chaperone's existence, subscribed for gratefully by the girls you married well, and penitentially by the girls you couldn't marry at all."

Lady Marabout laughed a little, but sighed again: "It is fun to you, but it is death to me'

"As the women say when we flirt with them," interpolated Carruthers. "You see, poor dear Lilla didn't know what to do. There she is, in that miserable island with the unpronounceable name that the man is 20

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governor of; shut out of all society, with nobody to marry this girl to if she had her there, except their secretary, or a West Indian planter. Of course, no mother would ruin her daughter's prospects, and take her into such an out-of-the-world corner. She knew no one so well as myself, and so to me she applied. She is the sweetest creature! I would do anything to oblige or please her, but I can't help being very sorry she has pounced upon me. And I don't the least know what this girl is like, not even whether she is presentable. I dare say she was petted and spoiled in that lazy, luxurious, tropical life when she was little, and she has been brought up the last few years in a convent in France, the very last education I should choose for a girl. Fancy, if I should find her an ignorant, unformed hoyden, or a lethargic, overgrown child, or an artificial French girl, who goes to confession every day, and carries on twenty undiscoverable love affairs-fancy, if she should be ugly, or awkward, or brusque, or gauche, as ten to one she will be-fancy, if I find her utterly unpresentable!-what in the world shall I do?"

"Decline her," suggested Carruthers. "I wouldn't have a horse put in my tilbury that I'd never seen, and risk driving a spavined, wall-eyed, underbred brute through the Park; and I suppose the ignominy of the début would be to you much what the ignominy of such a turn-out would be to me."

"Decline her? I can't, my dear Philip! I agreed to have her a month ago. I have never seen you to tell you till now, you know; you've been so sworn to Newmarket all through the Spring Meetings. Decline her? she comes to-night!"

"Comes to-night?" laughed Carruthers. "Tout est perdu, then. We shall see the Countess of Marabout moving through London society with a West Indian, who has a skin like Othello, has as much idea of manners as a housemaid that suddenly turns out an heiress, and is invited by people to whom she yesterday carried up their hot water, reflects indelible disgrace on her chaperone by gaucheries unparalleled, throws glass or silver missiles at Soames's head when he doesn't wait upon her at luncheon to her liking, as she has been accustomed to do at the negroes

"Philip, pray don't!" cried Lady Marabout, piteously.

"Or, we shall welcome under the Marabout wing a young lady fresh from convent walls and pensionnaire flirtations, who astonishes a dinnerparty by only partaking of the first course, and excusing herself from the sins of entremets and hors d'oeuvre on the score of jours maigres and conscientious scruples; who is visited by révérends pères from Farm-street, and fills your drawing-room with High Church curates, whom she tries to draw over from their mother's' to their sister's' open arms; who goes every day to early morning mass instead of taking an early morning canter, and who, when invited to sing at a soirée musicale, begins 'Sancta Maria adorata !'"

"Philip, don't!" cried Lady Marabout. "Bark at him, Bijou, the heartless man! It is as likely as not little Montolieu may realise one of your horrible croquis. Ah, Philip, you don't know what the worries of a chaperone are!"

"Thank Heaven, no!" laughed Carruthers. "Fancy if a boy, launched on London life after his Eton and Trinity course, had to be

placed under the wing of some male chaperone, who must never lose sight of him; who must take care he never gets into the Café Regence, or wander to Cremorne; who must mind his conduct is irreproachable and his acquaintances carefully weeded; who must preserve his unsoiled mind from French novels, and his innocent soul from the coulisseswhat a life we and the boys should lead! I don't know which of us would be martyred the most!"

"It is easy to make a joke of it, and very tempting, I dare say-one's woes always are amusing to other people, they don't feel the smart themselves, and only laugh at the grimace it forces from one-but I can tell you, Philip, it is anything but a pleasant prospect to have to go about in society with a girl one may be as ashamed of as a rococo bonnet. I don't know anything more trying; I would as soon wear paste diamonds as introduce a girl that is not perfectly good style."

"But why not have thought of all this in time?"

Lady Marabout sank back in her chair, and curled Bijou's ears with a sigh.

"My dear Philip, if everybody always thought of things in time, would there be any bêtises committed at all? It's precisely because repentance comes too late, that repentance is such a horrible wasp, with such a merciless sting. Besides, could I refuse poor Lilla Montolieu, unhappy as she is with that bear of a man?"

"I never felt more anxious in my life," thought Lady Marabout, as she sat before the fire in her drawing-room-it was a chilly April daystirring the cream into her ante-prandial cup of tea, resting one of her small satin-slippered feet on Bijou's back, while the firelight sparkled on the Dresden figures, the statuettes, the fifty thousand costly trifles, in which the Marabout salons equalled any in Belgravia. "I never felt more anxious—not on any of Philip's election-days, nor even when I've been listening to any of his speeches in the Commons, I do think. If she should be unpresentable-and then poor dear Lilla was not much of a match, and the girl will not have a sou, she tells me frankly; I can hardly hope to do anything for her. There is one thing, she will not be a responsibility, like Valencia or Cecil, and what would have been a bad match for them will be a good one for her. She must accept the first offer made her, if she have any at all, which will be very doubtful; few Benedicts bow to Beatrices now-a-days, unless Beatrice is a good 'investment,' as they call it. She will soon be here. That is the carriage now stopped, I do think. How anxious I feel! Really it can't be worse for a Turkish bridegroom never to see his fiancée's face till after the ceremony than it is for one not to have seen a girl till one has to introduce her. If she shouldn't be good style!"

And Lady Marabout's heart palpitated, possibly prophetically, as she set down her little Sèvres cup and rose out of her fauteuil, with Bijou shaking his silver collar and bells in a courteous bienvenue, to welcome the new inmate of Lowndes-square, with her sunny smile and her kindly voice, and her soft beaming eyes, which, as I have often stated, would have made Lady Marabout look amiable at an Abruzzi bandit who had demanded her purse or an executioner who had led her out to capital punishment, and now made her radiate, warm and bright, on a guest whose advent she dreaded. Hypocrisy, you say, ami lecteur. Not a bit of

it! Hypocrisy may be eminently courteous, but, take my word for it, it's never cordial! There are natures who throw such reflets d'or around them naturally, as there are others who think brusquerie and acidity cardinal virtues, and deal them out as points of conscience; are there not sunbeams that shine kindly alike on fragrant violet tufts and barren brambles, velvet lawns and muddy trottoirs? are there not hail-clouds who send jagged points of ice on all the world pêle-mêle, as mercilessly on the broken rose as on the granite boulder? (If Lady Marabout makes me too poetic, mes chers amis, pardonnez moi, she is a friend of mine, and I like her.)

"She is good style, thank Heaven!" thought Lady Marabout, as she went forward, with her white soft hands, their jewels flashing in the light, outstretched in welcome. "My dear child, how much you are like your mother! You must let me be fond of you for her sake, first, and thenfor your own!"

The conventional thought did not make the cordial utterance insincere -point du tout. The two ran in couples-we often drive such pairs, every one of us-and if they entail insincerity, Veritas, vale!

"My dear mother, I called to inquire if you have survived the anxiety of last night, and to know what jeune sauvage or fair religieuse you may have had sent you for the galvanising of Belgravia?" said Carruthers, paying his accustomed visit in his mother's boudoir, and throwing maccaroons at Bijou's nose.

"My dear Philip, I hardly know; she puzzles me. She's what, if she were a man, I should classify as a detrimental."

"Is she gauche ?"

"Not in the least. Perfect manners, wherever she learned them." Brusque ?"

"Soft as a gazelle. Very like her mother."

"Brown?"

"Fair as that statuette, with a beautiful bloom; lovely gold hair, too, and hazel eyes."

"What are the short-comings, then ?"

"There are none; and it's that that puzzles me.

She's been six years

in that convent, and yet, I do assure you, her style is perfect. She's hardly eighteen, but she's the air of the best society. She is-a-well, almost nobody, as people rank now, you know, for poor dear Lilla's marriage was not what she should have made, but the girl might be a royal duke's daughter for manner."

"A premature artificial femme du monde? Bah! nothing more odious," said Carruthers, poising a maccaroon on Pandore's nose. "Make ready!-present!-fire! There's a good dog!"

No, nothing of that sort; very natural, frank, vivacious. Nothing artificial about her; very charming, indeed! But she might be a young countess, the queen of a monde, rather than a young girl just out of a French convent; and, you know, my dear Philip, that sort of wit and nonchalance may be admirable for Cecil Ormsby, assured of her position, but they're dangerous to a girl like this Flora Montolieu: they will make people remark her and ask who she is, and try to pull her to pieces, if they don't find her somebody they dare not hit. I would much rather she were of the general ordinary pattern, pleasing, but nothing remark

able, well-bred, but nothing to envy, thoroughly educated, but monosyllabic in society; such a girl as that passes among all the rest, suits mediocre men (and the majority of men are mediocre, you know, my dear Philip), and pleases women because she is a nice girl, and no rival; but this little Montolieu

And Lady Marabout sighed with a prescience of coming troubles, while Carruthers laughed and rose.

"Will worry your life out! I must go, for I have to sit in courtmartial at two (for a mere trifle, a deuced bore to us, but le service oblige!), so I shall escape introduction to your little Montolieu to-day. Why will you fill your house with girls, my dear mother?-it is fifty times more agreeable when you are reigning alone. Henceforth, I can't come in to lunch with you without going through the formula of a mild flirtation-women think you so ill natured if you don't flirt a little with them, that amiable men like myself haven't strength of mind to refuse. You should keep your house an open sanctuary for me, when you know I've no other in London except when I retreat into the Guards' and the U.S.!"

"She puzzles me!" pondered Lady Marabout, as Despréaux disrobed her that night. "I always am to be puzzled, I think! I never can have one of those quiet, mediocre, well-mannered, remarkable-for-nothing girls, who have no idiosyncrasies and give nobody any trouble; one marries them safely to some second-rate man; nobody admires them, and nobody dislikes them; they're to society what neutral tint is among bodycolours, or rather what greys are among dresses-inoffensive, unimpeachable, always look ladylike, but never look brilliant; colourless dresses are very useful, and so are characterless girls; and I dare say the draper would tell us the greys in the long run are the easiest to sell, as the girls are to marry; they please the common-place, mediocre taste of the generality, and do for every-day wear! Little Montolieu puzzles me; she is charming, very striking, very lovable, but she puzzles me! I have a presentiment that that child will give me a world of anxiety, an infinitude of trouble!"

And Lady Marabout laid her head on her pillow, not the happier that Flora Montolieu was lying asleep in the room next her, dreaming of the wild-vine shadows and the night-blooming flowers of her native tropics, under the rose-curtains of her new home in Lowndes-square, already a burden on the soul and a responsibility on the mind of that home's mistress and head, Lady Marabout, née de Boncœur.

II.

HOW LADY MARABOUT'S PUZZLE AMUSED SOCIETY.

"IF she were a man I should certainly call her a detrimental," said Lady Marabout, after a more deliberate envisagement of her charge. "You know, my dear. Philip, the sort of man one calls detrimental; attractive enough to do a great deal of damage, and ineligible enough to make the damage very unacceptable: handsome and winning, but a younger son, or a something nobody wants; a delightful flirtation, but a terrible alliance; you know what I mean! Well, that is just what this little