'You can say so if you please. Sir Damask drives four in hand, rides as though he meant to break his neck every winter, is one of the best shots going, and is supposed to understand a yacht as well as any other gentleman out. And I'm rather afraid that before he was married he used to box with all the prize-fighters, and to be a little too free behind the scenes. If that makes a man like a hair-dresser, well, there he is.'
'How proud you are of his vices.'
'He's very good-natured, my dear, and as he does not interfere with me, I don't interfere with him. I hope you'll do as well. I dare say Mr Brehgert is good-natured.'
'He's an excellent man of business, and is making a very large fortune.'
'And has five or six grown-up children, who, no doubt, will be a comfort.'
'If I don't mind them, why need you? You have none at all, and you find it lonely enough.'
'Not at all lonely. I have everything that I desire. How hard you are trying to be ill-natured, Georgiana.'
'Why did you say that he was a--butcher?'
'I said nothing of the kind. I didn't even say that he was like a butcher. What I did say was this,--that I don't feel inclined to risk my own reputation on the appearance of new people at my table. Of course, I go in for what you call fashion. Some people can dare to ask anybody they meet in the streets. I can't. I've my own line, and I mean to follow it. It's hard work, I can tell you; and it would be harder still if I wasn't particular. If you like Mr Brehgert to come here on Tuesday evening, when the rooms will be full, you can ask him; but as for having him to dinner, I--won't--do--it.' So the matter was at last settled. Miss Longestaffe did ask Mr Brehgert for the Tuesday evening, and the two ladies were again friends.
Perhaps Lady Monogram, when she illustrated her position by an allusion to a butcher and a hair-dresser, had been unaware that Mr Brehgert had some resemblance to the form which men in that trade are supposed to bear. Let us at least hope that she was so. He was a fat, greasy man, good-looking in a certain degree, about fifty, with hair dyed black, and beard and moustache dyed a dark purple colour. The charm of his face consisted in a pair of very bright black eyes, which were, however, set too near together in his face for the general delight of Christians. He was stout;--fat all over rather than corpulent,--and had that look of command in his face which has become common to master-butchers, probably by long intercourse with sheep and oxen. But Mr Brehgert was considered to be a very good man of business, and was now regarded as being, in a commercial point of view, the leading member of the great financial firm of which he was the second partner. Mr Todd's day was nearly done. He walked about constantly between Lombard Street, the Exchange, and the Bank, and talked much to merchants; he had an opinion too of his own on particular cases; but the business had almost got beyond him, and Mr Brehgert was now supposed to be the moving spirit of the firm. He was a widower, living in a luxurious villa at Fulham with a family, not indeed grown up, as Lady Monogram had ill-naturedly said, but which would be grown up before long, varying from an eldest son of eighteen, who had just been placed at a desk in the office, to the youngest girl of twelve, who was at school at Brighton. He was a man who always asked for what he wanted; and having made up his mind that he wanted a second wife, had asked Miss Georgiana Longestaffe to fill that situation. He had met her at the Melmottes', had entertained her, with Madame Melmotte and Marie, at Beaudesert, as he called his villa, had then proposed in the square, and two days after had received an assenting answer in Bruton Street.