"I was pressed into the service, too!" continued Captain De Crespigny, in an injured tone, "and did not recover the annoyance till—till my last quadrille!" added he, glancing expressively at Marion. "If one must dance with plain girls at their own parties, I wish they would wear veils."
"Poor Lady Charlotte's figure is a perfect pyramid, narrow at the shoulders, and becoming thicker to the ankles," observed Agnes, laughing. "She got no partner the first half of the night, but being very fond of dancing, she stood near the corner of every dance, and was turned sometimes by mistake!"
"Very good for an impromptu, Agnes! The old girl gets a partner once a-year, I believe," added Sir Patrick. "If people will not be beauties, I can't help it; but I wonder at any one who had such a foot as Lady Charlotte's, would wish to live. It is so enormous that the eye cannot take it in all at once! The gout is nothing in comparison! De Crespigny, if you are ever shipwrecked at sea, you could desire no better boat than one of her shoes, and a paddle!"
"Her hand, too!" exclaimed Captain De Crespigny, shrugging his shoulders, and admiring his nails. "Mine is ashamed to look so insignificant beside it! Positively I awoke one forenoon, after my hand had been stung by a wasp, and seeing something so large, red, and swelled, I never recognized my own, but seized hold of it in the most friendly manner, saying, 'Ah, Lady Charlotte Malcolm!——'"
"I have heard," observed Marion, "that the celebrated Hogarth often lamented how completely his sense of the ridiculous had destroyed his sense of the beautiful; so that even in the face of an angel he could not avoid observing something to caricature; and I think some of us, if we do not take care, will soon be in danger of a similar calamity."
"Well!" exclaimed Sir Patrick, eagerly, "Let me enjoy a jest to-day, even if I were to die for it to-morrow."
"You, gentlemen, are both too bad!" said Agnes, lazily extending her own beautiful foot on a footstool. "Charlotte Malcolm has already a whole tier of double chins; her throat must have once belonged to a flamingo, and her complexion is like the models we see from abroad in terra cotta; but then, to do her justice, she dresses to perfect desperation; and," added Agnes, in her most amiable voice, for she always assumed the affectation of extreme candor in discussing other young ladies, "I am told Charlotte is very good tempered; at least so Lady Towercliffe says."
"And pray, what does that signify to me!" exclaimed Sir Patrick, contemptuously. "If there is nothing better to be said for your friend, then, Agnes, for ever hold your tongue. Amiable qualities are quite at a discount in general society! What does it matter to a man dancing a quadrille with any girl, that she is miraculously amiable, if she be miraculously ugly too! She may be a perfect termagant at home, for anything I care, provided she bring plenty of small talk into the ball-room; and I would not give a single sous to know whether her milliner's bills be paid, provided only she is well dressed. I would not take such a looking girl as Lady Charlotte Malcolm for my fifth wife!"
"You have quite burned her in effigy, now," observed Marion, looking up from her work. "Suppose we start some person, for variety, whom everybody must admire and praise!"
"That should be yourself, then!" said Captain De Crespigny. "Who else could answer the description?"