“So, then, you had scruples?”
“I have none at present,” said Hildegarde, taking up the volume, “besides,” she added, drawing her chair close to the table, “I positively must know whether or not the heroine marries the young poet.”
“Marry!” cried Hamilton, laughing, ironically, “there is not one word of marriage in the whole book—that would be much too unpoetical. I can hardly, however, imagine that this heroine really interests you—a heroine whose thoughts and reasonings are those of a woman who has plunged into the whirlpool of earthly pleasures, and from satiety learned to despise them. I wish it were any of the other works of Sand, or—or that, for your sake, Madame Dudevant had been less gloriously graphical in some parts of her work. If,” he added, half inquiringly, “if you merely read to know the end of the story, it is easily told; the events are few, and I am ready to relate them to you.”
“Oscar has a much higher opinion of my intellect than you have,” observed Hildegarde, slowly turning over the leaves; “he says my character is so decidedly formed, that I may read, without danger, whatever I please.”
“That was gross flattery,” said Hamilton, “for no girl of seventeen can read a work of this description without danger. The religious speculations alone make it unfit for you—but stay, I can prove it; read half a dozen pages aloud for me—where you please; the chances are in my favour that I prove myself right.”
“It is not exactly adapted for reading aloud,” said Hildegarde with some embarrassment.
“That is an infallible criterion by which you may know what to read for the next ten years,” said Hamilton.
“But I dare say I could find many parts which I should have no objection to read aloud.”
“Read then,” said Hamilton, with a provoking smile.
Hildegarde began. “The style at least is faultless,” she observed, at the end of a few minutes.