Poor youth! he never knows when to stop.
“Ha! I have it now, Miss Dora. Penelope was in the Odyssey—that book of engravings you were showing my cousin Charteris and me that Friday night. And how I laughed at what Charteris said—that he thought the good lady was very much over-rated, and Ulysses in the right of it to ride away again, when, coming back after ten years, he found her a prudish, psalm-singing, spinning old woman. Hollo!—have I put my foot into it, Lisabel?”
It seemed so, by the constrained silence of the whole party. Miss Johnston turned scarlet, and then white, but immediately said to me, laughing:—
“Mr. Charteris is an excellent classic; he was papa's pupil for some years. Have you ever met him?”
I had not, but I had often heard of him in certain circles of our camp society, as well as from Sir William Treherne. And I now suddenly recollected that, in talking over his son's marriage, the latter had expressed some surprise at the news Treherne had given, that this gay bachelor about town, whose society he had been always chary of cultivating for fear of harm to “the boy,” had been engaged for some time to a member of the Johnston family. This was, of course, Miss Johnston—Penelope.
I would have let the subject drop, but Miss Lisabel revived it.
“So you have heard a deal about Francis? No wonder!—-is he not a charming person?—and very much thought of in London society? Do tell us all you heard about him?” Treherne gave me a look.
“Oh! you'll never get anything out of the Doctor. He knows everybody, and everybody tells him everything, but there it ends. He is a perfect tomb—a sarcophagus of silence, as a fellow once called him.”
Miss Lisabel held up her hands, and vowed she was really afraid of me. Miss Johnston said, sharply, “She liked candid people: a sarcophagus of silence implied a 'body' inside.” At which all laughed, except the second sister, who said, with some warmth, “She thought there were few qualities more rare and valuable than the power of keeping a secret.”
“Of course, Dora thinks so. Doctor, my sister, there, is the most secretive little mouse that ever was born. Red-hot pincers could not force from her what she did not choose to tell, about herself or other people.”