“Likely enough, Tarleton; but a coquette’s lover is always on his guard; so she will not take me unawares.”
“So be it. But tell me, Devereux, who is to be your next mistress, Mrs. Denton or Lady Clancathcart? the world gives them both to you.”
“The world is always as generous with what is worthless as the bishop in the fable was with his blessing. However, I promise thee, Tarleton, that I will not interfere with thy claims either upon Mrs. Denton or Lady Clancathcart.”
“Nay,” said Tarleton, “I will own that you are a very Scipio; but it must be confessed, even by you, satirist as you are, that Lady Clancathcart has a beautiful set of features.”
“A handsome face, but so vilely made. She would make a splendid picture if, like the goddess Laverna, she could be painted as a head without a body.”
“Ha! ha! ha!—you have a bitter tongue, Count; but Mrs. Denton, what have you to say against her?”
“Nothing; she has no pretensions for me to contradict. She has a green eye and a sharp voice; a mincing gait and a broad foot. What friend of Mrs. Denton would not, therefore, counsel her to a prudent obscurity?”
“She never had but one lover in the world,” said Tarleton, “who was old, blind, lame, and poor; she accepted him, and became Mrs. Denton.”
“Yes,” said I, “she was like the magnet, and received her name from the very first person* sensible of her attraction.”
*Magnes.