“Ulpian, I had some very fashionable visitors to-day, who manifested an extraordinary interest in your past, present, and future. Mrs. Channing and her two lovely daughters spent the morning here, and left an invitation for you to attend a party at their house next Thursday evening. Miss Adelaide went into ecstasies over that portrait in which you wore your uniform, and asked numberless questions about you; among others, whether you were still heart-whole, or whether you had suffered some great disappointment early in life which kept you a bachelor. What do you suppose she said when I told her that you had never had a love-scrape in your life?”
“Of course she impugned the statement, which, to a young lady framed for flirtations, must indeed have appeared incredible.”
“On the contrary, she declared that the woman who succeeded in captivating you would achieve a triumph more difficult and more desirable than the victory of the Nile or of Trafalgar. I was tempted to ask her if she might be considered the ambitious Nelson, but of course politeness forbade. Ulpian, she is the prettiest creature I ever looked at.”
“Yes, as pretty as mere healthy flesh can be without the 62 sublimation and radiance of an indwelling soul. There is nothing which impresses me so mournfully as the sight of a beautiful, frivolous, unscrupulous woman, who immolates all that is truly feminine in her character upon the shrine of swollen vanity; and whose career from cradle to grave is as utterly aimless and useless as that of some gaudy, flaunting ephemeron of the tropics. Such women act as extinguishers upon the feeble, flickering flame of chivalry, which modern degeneracy in manners and morals has almost smothered.”
His tone and countenance evinced more contempt than Salome had known him to express on any former occasion, and, glancing at his clear, steady, grave blue eyes, she said to herself,—
“At least he will never strike his colors to Admiral Adelaide Channing, and I should dislike to occupy her place in his estimation.”
“My dear boy, you must not speak in such ungrateful terms of my beautiful visitor, who certainly has some serious design on your heart, if I may judge from the very extravagant praise she lavished upon you. I daresay she is a very nice, sweet girl, and you know you told me once that if you should ever marry your wife must be a beauty, else you could not love her.”
“Very true, Janet, and I have no intention of retracting or diminishing my rigid requirements, but my definition of beauty includes more than mere physical perfection,—than satin skin, pearl-tinted, fine eyes, faultless teeth, abundant silky tresses, and rounded figure. It demands that the heart whose blood paints lips and cheek, shall be pure, generous, and holy; that the soul which looks out at me from lustrous eyes shall be consecrated to another deity than Fashion,—shall be as full of magnanimity, and strength, and peace, as a harp is of melody; my beauty means meekness, faith, sanctity, and exacts mental, moral, and material excellence. Rest assured, my dear, sage counsellor, that if ever I bring a wife to my hearthstone I will have selected her in obedience to the advice of Joubert, who admonished us, ‘We should choose 63 for a wife only the woman we would choose for a friend, were she a man.’”
“You expect too much; you will never find your perfect ideal walking in flesh.”
“I will content myself with nothing less—I promise you that.”