But of all
this, nobody, I fancy, knows anything. What they do know is that
Madame Max Goesler spends seven or eight thousand a year, and that
she will give no man an opportunity of even asking her to marry him.
People used to be shy of her, but she goes almost everywhere now."
"She has not been at Portman Square?"
"Oh no; but then Lady Glencora is so much more advanced than we are!
After all, we are but humdrum people, as the world goes now."
Then Phineas began to roam about the rooms, striving to find an
opportunity of engrossing five minutes of Miss Effingham's attention.
During the time that Lady Laura was giving him the history of Madame
Max Goesler his eyes had wandered round, and he had perceived that
Violet was standing in the further corner of a large lobby on to
which the stairs opened,--so situated, indeed, that she could hardly
escape, because of the increasing crowd, but on that very account
almost impossible to be reached. He could see, also, that she was
talking to Lord Fawn, an unmarried peer of something over thirty
years of age, with an unrivalled pair of whiskers, a small estate,
and a rising political reputation. Lord Fawn had been talking to
Violet through the whole dinner, and Phineas was beginning to think
that he should like to make another journey to Blankenberg, with the
object of meeting his lordship on the sands.
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