“....And sure the match Were rich and honourable.”
—Two Gentlemen of Verona.
“We that are true lovers run into strange capers.”
—As You Like It.
“....That which I would discover,
The law of friendship bids me to conceal.”
—Two Gentlemen of Verona.
“Tarry I here, I but attend on death;
But fly I hence, I fly away from life.”
“DEAR me! what can it possibly mean? how I wish I could guess it!” said the youngest Miss Simper.
“Do you know what it is, Mr. Oaklands?” asked the second Miss Simper.
“I'm sure he does, he looks so delightfully wicked,” added the eldest Miss Simper, shaking her ringlets in a fascinating manner, to evince her faith in the durability of their curl.
The eldest Miss Simper had been out four seasons, and spent the last winter at Nice, on the strength of which she talked to young men of themselves in the third person, to show her knowledge of the world, and embodied in her behaviour generally a complete system of “Matrimony-made-easy, or the whole Art of getting a good Establishment,” proceeding from early lessons in converting acquaintances into flirts, up to the important final clause—how to lead young men of property to propose.
“Really,” replied Oaklands, “my face must be far more expressive and less honest than I was aware of, for I can assure you they have studiously kept me in the dark as to the meaning.”
“But you have made out some idea for yourself; it is impossible that it should be otherwise,” observed the second Miss Simper, who had rubbed off some of her shyness upon a certain young Hebrew Professor at the last Cambridge Installation, and become rather blue from the contact.
“Have you?” said the youngest Miss Simper, who, being as nearly a fool as it is possible to allow that a pretty girl of seventeen can be, rested her pretensions upon a plaintive voice and a pensive smile, which went just far enough to reveal an irreproachable set of teeth, and then faded away into an expression of gentle sorrow, the source of which, like that of the Niger, had as yet remained undiscovered.
“Oh, he has!” exclaimed the eldest Miss Simper; “that exquisitely sarcastic, yet tantalising curl of the upper-lip, tells me that it is so.”
“Since you press me,” replied Oaklands, “I confess, I believe I have guessed it.”