Ralph had never shown much fondness at home, for the refinements of
good female society. Abroad, he had lived as exclusively as he
possibly could, among women whose characters ranged downwards by
infinitesimal degrees, from the mysteriously doubtful to the
notoriously bad. The highly-bred, highly-refined, highly-accomplished
young English beauties had no charm for him. He detected at once the
domestic conspiracy of which he was destined to become the victim. He
often came up-stairs, at night, into my bed-room; and while he was
amusing himself by derisively kicking about my simple clothes and
simple toilette apparatus; while he was laughing in his old careless
way at my quiet habits and monotonous life, used to slip in,
parenthetically, all sorts of sarcasms about our young lady guests. To
him, their manners were horribly inanimate; their innocence, hypocrisy
of education. Pure complexions and regular features were very well, he
said, as far as they went; but when a girl could not walk properly,
when she shook hands with you with cold fingers, when having good eyes
she could not make a stimulating use of them, then it was time to
sentence the regular features and pure complexions to be taken back
forthwith to the nursery from which they came. For _his_ part, he
missed the conversation of his witty Polish Countess, and longed for
another pancake-supper with his favourite _grisettes._

The failure of my father's last experiment with Ralph soon became
apparent. Watchful and experienced mothers began to suspect that my
brother's method of flirtation was dangerous, and his style of
waltzing improper. One or two ultra-cautious parents, alarmed by the
laxity of his manners and opinions, removed their daughters out of
harm's way, by shortening their visits. The rest were spared any such
necessity. My father suddenly discovered that Ralph was devoting