English statesmen had not only dandled her, they had taught her, walked with her, written to her, and--no doubt--flirted with her.
Doris, as she listened to her, disliked her heartily, and at the same time could not help being thrilled by so much knowledge, so much contact with history in the making, and by such a masterful way, in a woman, with the great ones of the earth.

"What a worm she must think me!" thought Doris--"what a worm she _does_ think me--and the likes of me!" At the same time, the spectator must needs admit there was something else in Lady Dunstable's talk than mere intelligence or mere mannishness.

There was undoubtedly something of "the good fellow," and, through all her hard hitting, a curious absence--in conversation--of the personal egotism she was quite ready to show in all the trifles of life.
On the present occasion her main object clearly was to bring out Arthur Meadows--the new captive of her bow and spear; to find out what was in him; to see if he was worthy of her inner circle.

Throwing all compliment aside, she attacked him hotly on certain statements--certain estimates--in his lectures.

Her knowledge was personal; the knowledge of one whose father had sat in Dizzy's latest Cabinet, while, through the endless cousinship of the English landed families, she was as much related to the Whig as to the Tory leaders of the past.