"And what may your opinion be?"

"Why, that she's not worth troubling about--an idiot too abysmal."

"Doesn't she care for that?"

"Just enough, as you saw, to hug me till I cry out. She's too pleased
with herself for anything else to matter."

"Surely, my dear friend," I rejoined, "she has a good deal to be pleased
with!"

"So every one tells her, and so you would have told her if I had given
you the chance. However, that doesn't signify either, for her vanity is
beyond all making or mending. She believes in herself, and she's
welcome, after all, poor dear, having only herself to look to. I've
seldom met a young woman more completely free to be silly. She has a
clear course--she'll make a showy finish."

"Well," I replied, "as she probably will reduce many persons to the same
degraded state, her partaking of it won't stand out so much."

"If you mean that the world's full of twaddlers I quite agree with you!"
cried Mrs. Meldrum, trumpeting her laugh half across the Channel.

I had after this to consider a little what she would call my mother's
son, but I didn't let it prevent me from insisting on her making me
acquainted with Flora Saunt; indeed I took the bull by the horns, urging
that she had drawn the portrait of a nature which common charity now
demanded of her to put into relation with a character really fine. Such