“There is really no one in the case,” said Nelly, laughing. “No one to be either faithful or unworthy.”
“Worse again, dearest. There is nothing so good at your age as an unhappy attachment. A girl without a grievance always mopes; and,” added she, with a marked acuteness of look, “moping ages one quicker than downright grief. The eyes get a heavy expression, and the mouth drags at the corners, and the chin—isn't it funny, now, such a stolid feature as the chin should take on to worry us?—but the chin widens and becomes square, like those Egyptian horrors in the Museum.”
“I must look to that,” said Nelly, gravely. “I'd be shocked to find my chin betraying me.”
“And men are such wretches. There is no amount of fretting they don't exact from us; but if we show any signs of it afterwards—any hard lines about the eyes, or any patchiness of color in the cheek—they cry out, 'Is n't she gone off?' That's their phrase. 'Is n't she gone off?'”
“How well you understand; how well you read them!”
“I should think I do; but after all, dearest, they have very few devices: if it was n't that they can get away, run off to the clubs and their other haunts, they would have no chance with us. See how they fare in country houses, for instance. How many escape there! What a nice stuff your dress is made of!”
“It was very cheap.”
“No matter; it's English. That's the great thing here. Any one can buy a 'gros.' What one really wants is a nameless texture and a neutral tint. You must positively walk with me on the Pincian in that dress. Roman men remark everything. You 'll not be ten minutes on the promenade till every one will know whether you wear two buttons on your gloves or three.”
“How odious!”
“How delightful! Why, my dear child, for whom do we dress? Not for each other: no more than the artists of a theatre act or sing for the rest of the company. Our audience is before us; not always a very enlightened or cultivated one, but always critical. There, do look at that stupid groom; see how he suffers my horse to lag behind: the certain way to have him kicked by the other; and I should die, I mean really die, if anything happened to Ben Azir. By the way, how well our parson rides! I declare I like him better in the saddle than in the pulpit. They rave here about the way he jumps the ox-fences. You must say tant des choses for me, to him and his sister, whom I fear I have treated shamefully. I was to have had her to dinner one day, and I forgot all about it; but she did n't mind, and wrote me the prettiest note in the world. But I always say, it is so easy for people of small means to be good-tempered. They have no jealousies about going here or there; no heartburnings that such a one's lace is Brussels point, and much finer than their own. Don't you agree with me? There, I knew it would come to that. He's got the snaffle out of Ben Azir's mouth, and he's sure to break away.”