“What’s the use of their falling in love, either of them?” said Elizabeth prosaically. “They can’t marry.”
“Why not? He is the eldest son, and Captain Pennant’s family is as old as ours. And look at us! We’re not beauties, and I know papa does not mean to give us very handsome fortunes, or else you would have had an offer before this. You’re twenty, you know.”
“Certainly. And I don’t want any offer,” answered her sister, not without a pardonable suspicion of tartness. “But I certainly shouldn’t condescend to flirt with a man beneath me in rank, and without a penny. And there must be madness in the family, or Captain Pennant would never have adopted a fisherman’s baby and brought it up as his own child.”
“Deborah’s very pretty,” said Lady Kate, thoughtfully. “If we were half as good-looking we should have been photographed all over the place as beauties.”
“Pretty! Do you think so?” asked her sister, with an air of matter-of-fact impartiality. “I don’t admire those big, coarse-looking women. I like a face which shows signs of the higher intelligence, a face which lights up. And Deborah has no conversation. I can’t admire a girl without conversation.”
“Papa can though,” said Kate, rather maliciously. “He admires Deborah, and I am sure you can’t say he likes coarse-looking women.”
“A gentlemen’s taste in beauty is not the same as a lady’s,” said Elizabeth, moving restlessly, and wishing that her persistent little sister would let her change this awkward subject.
“I know it isn’t. I expect some women would admire Mademoiselle de Laval,” whispered Kate, glancing towards the dozing French governess, whose wide nose and mouth, leathern complexion and well-defined moustache formed a combination of feminine attractions rarely to be met with. “But do you know, Betty, after mature consideration of the subject, I would rather be pretty according to the gentlemen’s standard than according to the ladies’.”
Lady Elizabeth, who, although extremely erudite, was rather dull, did not perceive all the point of this speech, but felt that the pert girl was slyly laughing at her. She was too good-tempered to grow cross, however; she only grew didactic.
“You can’t expect much refinement from a fisherman’s daughter, of course,” she said in obstinate tone. “I’ve always pitied poor Mrs. Pennant—who comes of one of the oldest families in England, better than her husband’s—for having to submit to such an absurd caprice of his. She feels it, poor thing, dreadfully.”