“No, I was finishing Miss Ogilvie’s wedding lace.”
“Well, that French captain, that Elfie went on with at the commandant’s ball, came riding up in full splendour, and trotted alongside of her, chattering away, she bowing and smiling, and playing off all her airs, and at last letting him give her a great white flower. Didn’t you see it in her breast at breakfast? Poor Allen was looking as if he had eaten wormwood all the time when he was forced to fall back upon me, and I suppose he has been having it out with her and has got the worst of it.”
“O, it is that, is it?” said Lord Fordham; “I thought she wanted to pique Allen, she was so empressee with me.”
“If people will be so foolish as to care for a pretty face,” sagely said Sydney.
“You know it is not only that,” said Babie; “Allen is bound in honour to marry Elvira, to repair the great injustice. It is a great pity she will not marry him now at once, but I think she is afraid, because then, you know, she would get to have a soul, like Undine, and she doesn’t want one yet.”
“That’s a new view of the case,” said Lord Fordham in his peculiar lazy manner, “and taken allegorically it may be the true one.”
“But one would like to have a soul,” said Sydney.
“I’m not sure,” said Babie, with a great look of awe. “One would know it was best, but it would be very tremendous to feel all sorts of thoughts and perceptions swelling up in one.”
“If that is the soul,” said Armine.
“Which is the soul?” said Babie, “our understanding, or our feelings, or both?”