"Clara Granville!"
"You are beyond all bearing absurd and tormenting, Pat!" continued Agnes, with a contemptuous toss of her head; "but I may at least venture with impunity to ask, were any of the ladies well dressed?"
"Clara Granville!"
"That ends my curiosity on the subject of your visit," replied Agnes, angrily affecting to yawn. "Never try to persuade me you care for Clara. She is the most unflirtable girl in the world! As cold as a statue of ice in an east wind! She has the most tiresome style of prettiness that can be conceived, with that alabaster paleness, that petrifying calmness of manner, and a heart like a cucumber! The very style of her dress is wearying, with not a color that one could give a name to; and then her long undertoned tete-a-tete conversations about nobody knows what, as dull and monotonous as a dinner-bell, never enlivened with a bit of gossip, nor spiced with any scandal! There is a whole "Society for the suppression of vice" in her eye every time she looks at one! She would evidently be terrified for the echo of her own voice, and never yet committed the indiscretion of a laugh!"
"Are you done?" asked Sir Patrick, in a tone of concentrated anger, which would have silenced any one but Agnes.
"Done! I could speak for two hours without telling you half how little I think of Clara Granville!" said she, in a paroxysm of eloquence. "One comfort is, however, she will never take!"
"But Clara has already 'taken,' as you elegantly express yourself," exclaimed Sir Patrick, who had been walking vehemently up and down the room during this tirade from Agnes, and now stood opposite to her, with a look of angry defiance. "Clara is surpassingly lovely! Her portrait should be the frontispiece to Finden's next Book of Beauty! She has the loveliness of a seraph!"
"Certainly, if you mean that she looks as if the first breath of wind would blow her down! like an overgrown geranium, that should be tied up to a stick!"
"Clara is delicate and graceful as the first frail blossoms of spring," interrupted Sir Patrick. "She has but one fault in the world, and that is, being faultless! Clara is worth a whole creation of ordinary girls! That look of mild serenity, and those deep, thoughtful eyes, looking as serene as the blue firmament above. Her every attitude is what a Guido might have delighted to paint. Agnes, there is music and rapture in every tone of her voice! At Lady Towercliffe's no one was looked at, nor spoken to, but Miss Granville! She stole into all hearts, without any man guessing his danger till too late! Everybody admired, or, I should rather, say, loved her!"
"You are 'everybody,' then, I suppose, for I never heard of any one else, who for half a moment thought her tolerable. All this nonsense is merely to tease me, Pat. Do confess it at once, and be serious!"