With Lord Colambre she played more artfully: she drew him out in
defence of his beloved country, and gave him opportunities of
appearing to advantage; this he could not help feeling, especially
when the Lady Isabel was present. Lady Dashfort had dealt long enough
with human nature to know, that to make any man pleased with her, she
should begin by making him pleased with himself.

Insensibly the antipathy that Lord Colambre had originally felt to
Lady Dashfort wore off; her faults, he began to think, were assumed;
he pardoned her defiance of good-breeding, when he observed that she
could, when she chose it, be most engagingly polite. It was not that
she did not know what was right, but that she did not think it always
for her interest to practise it.

The party opposed to Lady Dashfort affirmed that her wit depended
merely on unexpectedness; a characteristic which may be applied to any
impropriety of speech, manner, or conduct. In some of her ladyship's
repartees, however, Lord Colambre now acknowledged there was more
than unexpectedness; there was real wit; but it was of a sort utterly
unfit for a woman, and he was sorry that Lady Isabel should hear
it. In short, exceptionable as it was altogether, Lady Dashfort's
conversation had become entertaining to him; and though he could never
esteem, or feel in the least interested about her, he began to allow
that she could be agreeable.

"Ay, I knew how it would be," said she, when some of her friends told
her this. "He began by detesting me, and did I not tell you that,
if I thought it worth my while to make him like me, he must, sooner
or later? I delight in seeing people begin with me as they do with