"Perhaps not exactly; and besides, black angels were never the objects of my idolatry. But don't stamp your foot at me, and I will answer you seriously. I do not think that from the blissful time when I was sixteen, up to my present solemn five-and-thirty, I could ever have been tempted to look a second time at any miss under the chaperonship of such a dame as that feather and furbelow lady."
"Then why, in the name of common sense, did you gaze so earnestly at the furbelow lady herself?"
"To answer that truly, Frederick, would involve the confession of a peculiar family weakness."
"A family weakness?... Pray, be confidential; I will promise to be discreet; and, indeed, as my brother has just made, as the newspapers say, a 'lovely bride' of your sister, I have some right to a participation in the family secrets. Come, disclose!... What family reason have you for choosing to gaze upon a great vulgar woman, verging towards forty, and refusing to look at a young creature, as beautiful as a houri, who happens to be in her company?"
"I suspect it is because I am near of kin to my mother's sister.... Did you never hear of the peculiarity that attaches to my respected aunt, Lady Elizabeth Norris? She scruples not to avow that she prefers the society of people who amuse her by their absurdities to every other."
"Oh yes!... I have heard all that from Edward, who has, I can tell you, been occasionally somewhat horrified at what the queer old lady calls her soirées antíthèstiques. But you don't mean to tell me, Hubert, that you ever take the fancy of surrounding yourself with all the greatest quizzes you can find in compliment to your old aunt?"
"Why, no.... I do not go so far as that yet, and perhaps I sometimes wish that she did not either, for occasionally she carries the whim rather too far; yet I believe truly that I am more likely to gaze with attention at a particularly ridiculous-looking woman than at any young nymph under her protection ... or possessing the awful privilege of calling her AUNT!"
"A young nymph!... what a hateful phrase! Elegant, delicate creature!... I swear to you, Colonel Hubert, that you have lowered yourself very materially in my estimation by your want of tact in not immediately perceiving that, although a nepotine connexion unhappily exists between them, by marriage probably, or by the half blood, there must still be something very peculiar in the circumstances which have brought so incongruous a pair together."
"Well, Frederick, you may be right ... and perhaps, my friend, my eyes begin to fail me; for, to tell you the truth, your adorable's crape veil was too thick for me to see anything through it."
"To be sure it was!" cried Stephenson, quite delighted at the amende; "I thought it was impossible you could underrate such a face as that."