Maltravers was soon of the latter class. Madame de Ventadour had been
in England in her childhood, for her parents had been /emigres/. She
spoke English well and fluently, and this pleased Maltravers; for though
the French language was sufficiently familiar to him, he was like most
who are more vain of the mind than the person, and proudly averse to
hazarding his best thoughts in the domino of a foreign language. We
don't care how faulty the accent, or how incorrect the idiom, in which
we talk nothings; but if we utter any of the poetry within us, we
shudder at the risk of the most trifling solecism.

This was especially the case with Maltravers; for, besides being now
somewhat ripened from his careless boyhood into a proud and fastidious
man, he had a natural love for the Becoming. This love was
unconsciously visible in trifles: it is the natural parent of Good
Taste. And it was indeed an inborn good taste which redeemed Ernest's
natural carelessness in those personal matters in which young men
usually take a pride. An habitual and soldier-like neatness, and a love
of order and symmetry, stood with him in the stead of elaborate
attention to equipage and dress.

Maltravers had not thought twice in his life whether he was handsome or
not; and, like most men who have a knowledge of the gentler sex, he knew
that beauty had little to do with engaging the love of women. The air,
the manner, the tone, the conversation, the something that interests,
and the something to be proud of--these are the attributes of the man
made to be loved. And the Beauty-man is, nine times out of ten, little
more than the oracle of his aunts, and the "/Sich/ a love!" of the
housemaids!

To return from this digression, Maltravers was glad that he could talk