Mrs. Dale is silent, and turns her handkerchief in her pretty little white hands, appearing to contemplate the R in Caroline.
MISS JEMIMA (half pettishly, half coaxingly).—“Why is he interesting? I scarcely ever looked at him; they say he smokes, and never eats. Ugly, too!”
MRS. DALE.—“Ugly,—no. A fine bead,—very like Dante’s; but what is beauty?”
MISS JEMIMA.—“Very true: what is it indeed? Yes, as you say, I think there is something interesting about him; he looks melancholy, but that may be because he is poor.”
MRS. DALE.—“It is astonishing how little one feels poverty when one loves. Charles and I were very poor once,—before the squire—” Mrs. Dale paused, looked towards the squire, and murmured a blessing, the warmth of which brought tears into her eyes. “Yes,” she added, after a pause, “we were very poor, but we were happy even then,—more thanks to Charles than to me;” and tears from a new source again dimmed those quick, lively eyes, as the little woman gazed fondly on her husband, whose brows were knit into a black frown over a bad hand.
MISS JEMIMA.—“It is only those horrid men who think of money as a source of happiness. I should be the last person to esteem a gentleman less because he was poor.”
MRS. DALE.—“I wonder the squire does not ask Signor Riccabocca here more often. Such an acquisition we find him!”
The squire’s voice from the card-table.—“Whom ought I to ask more often, Mrs. Dale?”
Parson’s voice, impatiently.—“Come, come, come, squire: play to my queen of diamonds,—do!”
SQUIRE.—“There, I trump it! pick up the trick, Mrs. H.”