"It is, indeed, too warm for riding at present."

"I did not say so."

"Hem--I thought you did."

Another pause.

"Did you speak, Lady Florence?"

"No."

"Oh, I beg pardon--Lord Saxingham is looking very well."

"I am glad you think so."

"Your picture in the exhibition scarcely does you justice, Lady
Florence; yet Lawrence is usually happy."

"You are very flattering," said Lady Florence, with a lively and
perceptible impatience in her tone and manner. The young beauty was
thoroughly spoilt--and now all the scorn of a scornful nature was drawn
forth, by observing the envious eyes of the crowd were bent upon one
whom the Duke of ------ was actually talking to. Brilliant as were her
own powers of conversation, she would not deign to exert them--she was
an aristocrat of intellect rather than birth, and she took it into her
head that the duke was an idiot. She was very much mistaken. If she
had but broken up the ice, she would have found that the water below was
not shallow. The duke, in fact, like many other Englishmen, though he
did not like the trouble of showing forth, and had an ungainly manner,