Mountstuart admired herself as each one trotted forth in turn
characteristically, with one exception unaware of the aid which was being
rendered to a distressed damsel wretchedly incapable of decent hypocrisy. Her
intrepid lead had shown her hand to the colonel and drawn the enemy at a blow.
    Sir Willoughby's in fine, however, did not please her: still less did his
lackadaisical Lothario-like bowing and smiling to Miss Dale: and he perceived it
and was hurt. For how, carrying his tremendous load, was he to compete with
these unhandicapped men in the game of nonsense she had such a fondness for
starting at a table? He was further annoyed to hear Miss Eleanor and Miss Isabel
Patterne agree together, that caricature was the final word of the definition.
Relatives should know better than to deliver these awards to us in public.
    »Well!« quoth Lady Busshe, expressive of stupefaction at the strange dust
she had raised.
    »Are they on view, Miss Middleton?« inquired Lady Culmer.
    »There's a regiment of us on view and ready for inspection,« Colonel De
Craye bowed to her, but she would not be foiled. »Miss Middleton's admirers are
always on view,« said he.
    »Are they to be seen?« said Lady Busshe.
    Clara made her face a question, with a laudable smoothness.
    »The wedding-presents,« Lady Culmer explained.
    »No.«
    »Otherwise, my dear, we are in danger of duplicating and triplicating and
quadruplicating, not at all to the satisfaction of the bride.«
    »But there's a worse danger to encounter in the on view, my lady,« said De
Craye; »and that's the magnetic attraction a display of wedding-presents is sure
to have for the ineffable burglar, who must have a nuptial soul in him, for
wherever there's that collection on view, he's never a league off. And 'tis said
he knows a lady's dressing-case presented to her on the occasion, fifteen years
after the event.«
    »As many as fifteen?« said Mrs. Mountstuart.
    »By computation of the police. And if the presents are on view, dogs are of
no use, nor bolts, nor bars: - he's worse than Cupid. The only protection to be
found, singular as it may be thought, is in a couple of bottles of the oldest
Jamaica rum in the British Isles.«
    »Rum?« cried Lady Busshe.
    »The liquor of the Royal Navy, my lady