“No. I should have thought you might have guessed I was a Benedict by my look.”
“Well, whenever you marry don’t take a wife out of Switzerland; for if you begin blaspheming Helvetia, and cursing the cantons—above all, if you mention the word ass in the same breath with the name Tell (for ass is baudet, I know; though Monsieur is pleased to translate it esprit-fort) your mountain maid will some night smother her Breton-bretonnant, even as your own Shakspeare’s Othello smothered Desdemona.”
“I am warned,” said Hunsden; “and so are you, lad,” (nodding to me). “I hope yet to hear of a travesty of the Moor and his gentle lady, in which the parts shall be reversed according to the plan just sketched—you, however, being in my nightcap. Farewell, mademoiselle!” He bowed on her hand, absolutely like Sir Charles Grandison on that of Harriet Byron; adding—“Death from such fingers would not be without charms.”
“Mon Dieu!” murmured Frances, opening her large eyes and lifting her distinctly arched brows; “c’est qu’il fait des compliments! je ne m’y suis pas attendu.” She smiled, half in ire, half in mirth, curtsied with foreign grace, and so they parted.
No sooner had we got into the street than Hunsden collared me.
“And that is your lace-mender?” said he; “and you reckon you have done a fine, magnanimous thing in offering to marry her? You, a scion of Seacombe, have proved your disdain of social distinctions by taking up with an ouvrière! And I pitied the fellow, thinking his feelings had misled him, and that he had hurt himself by contracting a low match!”
“Just let go my collar, Hunsden.”
On the contrary, he swayed me to and fro; so I grappled him round the waist. It was dark; the street lonely and lampless. We had then a tug for it; and after we had both rolled on the pavement, and with difficulty picked ourselves up, we agreed to walk on more soberly.
“Yes, that’s my lace-mender,” said I; “and she is to be mine for life—God willing.”
“God is not willing—you can’t suppose it; what business have you to be suited so well with a partner? And she treats you with a sort of respect, too, and says, ‘Monsieur’ and modulates her tone in addressing you, actually, as if you were something superior! She could not evince more deference to such a one as I, were she favoured by fortune to the supreme extent of being my choice instead of yours.”