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Bertram one of that great and flourishing class of whom Scandal says "she doesn't know how they do it, or who pays for it" albeit a bad match, even for Miss Tayleure, was, as I have said, in good English and French society, and drove his phaeton. He was saluted on his way along the Champs Elysées and by the lake, by many, and by some ladies who were still unaccountably lingering in Paris.
A superb little Victoria passed. Bertram raised his hat. "An Irish girl," he said, "of superb beauty." At the Madrid we met a few people we knew; and, driving home, Bertram saluted Miss Tayleure, who was crawling round the lake with her twin sister, and was provoked to be recognised by a man of fashion in a hack vehicle in the month of August.
Miss Tayleure described him as all eye-glass and shirt-front. Comic artists have often drawn the moon capering on spider-legs; a little filling out would make the Vicomte very like the caricature. He was profound in his salutations, learned in lace, witty thanks to the Figaro. His attentions to Miss Theodosia Cockayne, and to Madame her mother, were of the most splendid and elaborate description.
First among the sharp peckers was Miss Tayleure, who always had her suspicions of Captain Bertram, although she was too good-natured to say anything. The seasons had circled three or four times since she had had the honour of being introduced to the gentleman, and yet the lady was waiting to see what the improved facilities for travel might bring her in the matrimonial line.
This is a very quiet humdrum story, when it is compared with the dramas of society, provincial and Parisian, which the Gazette des Tribunaux is constantly presenting to its readers. When I reached Paris it was forgotten. Miss Tayleure had moved off to Tours for economy some said; to break new ground, according to others. There had been diplomatic changes.
He avoided his old thoroughfares. He had discovered that all the backs of the Tuileries chairs were towards him. Miss Tayleure had had her revenge before she left. He had heard that "the fellows were sorry for him," and that they were not anxious to see him. The very waiters in his café knew that evil had befallen him, and were less respectful than of old.
Tayleure would cheapen a penny loaf, and run down the price of a box of lucifer matches. There's a chance for you! She would be an economical wife; but then, my dear fellow, she would spend all the savings on herself. Her virtue is like Gibraltar!" "And would be safe as unintrenched tableland, I should think." "Hang it!" Bertram handsomely interposed, "let us drop poor Tayleure.
She had, her dearest friends said, almost made up her mind to marry into commerce. "Poor Tayleure!" one of the attachés said, at the Café Anglais, over his Marennes oysters, after the opera; "doomed to pig-iron, I'm afraid. Must do it. Can't carry on much longer. Another skein of false hair this season, by Jove."
Her noble head was many inches out of water; the conviction gave her superb confidence when she had to pass an opinion on her neighbour. Two old friends of Cosmo Bertram are lounging in the garden of the Imperial Club. "Hasn't old Tayleure got her knife into Bertram! Poor dear boy. It's all up with him. Great pity. Was a capital fellow." "Don't you know the secret?
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