“Can it be pawsible, Lady Mawgawet,” exclaimed the young Duke, addressing Miss Margaret Grahame, using the prefix “Lady” as he said in “playfulness,” “that you did not considaw that that young cweachaw wejoices in one of the fawest, divinest faces, ever pwesented by the wosy goddess Beauty to one of youaw chawming sex?”
“I scarcely noticed the person,” returned Margaret, in a cold, supercilious tone, bending her half-closed eyes upon a magnificently jewelled bracelet, clasping her fat white arm, which she placed in various positions to study the effect of the ornament, and to admire trinket and arm together.
Helen looked up at the Duke with a quick action and a glittering eye. She said in a slightly petulant tone--
“Wax dolls have the ‘fairest, divinest faces,’ my lord Duke, yet we do not fall into raptures with them.”
“Not _we_, assuredly Miss Grahame,” observed Lester Vane, slowly, “but little children do. In their eyes dolls’ faces possess immense attractions, and they have a title to be ranked as the best judges of beauty in dolls, as”----
“As men lay claim to be of loveliness in woman,” she responded, with a scarcely perceptible sneer.
“As, indeed, they ought to be,” he rejoined, quickly; “else why are your sex so desirous to obtain the approving admiration of ours?”
“A fallacy, which your sex has the impertinence to assert, and the fatuity to believe,” she responded with a curling lip.
“A shrewd imbecility, nevertheless,” returned Vane, smiling meaningly. “What say you, Miss Evangeline?”
“Indeed, I think she had the sweetest face I ever beheld!” exclaimed Evangeline, with an enthusiasm which afflicted Mrs. Grahame--if that lady permitted any emotion, residing soberly within her well-ordered frame, to agitate itself to the extent of affliction.
“Pish!” cried Malcolm, “you like dolls, even now. The fact is, you are all at fault; the companion was the prettiest of the two.”
“What, haw maid?” inquired the Duke, extending his eyebrows half way up his forehead.
“No, her friend. I have seen them arm in arm. None of you looked at her face; I did--she had the prettiest in Christendom, St. Allborne, all the world to nothing.”
“May I, without inadvertence, inquire whose merits you are discussing?” inquired Mr. Grahame, with a loftiness he had for some time not displayed.