“You have too fine a comedy face to be sentimental, Dr. Goldsmith,” she said. “But to business. I tell you I even smiled upon the gentleman, for I have found that the traps which are netted with silk are invariably the most effective.”
“You have found that by your experience of traps?” said Goldsmith. “The smile is the silken net?”
“Even so,” said she, giving an excellent example of the fatal mesh. “Ah, Dr. Goldsmith, you would do well to avoid the woman who smiles on you.”
“Alas! madam, the caution is thrown away upon me; she smiles not on me, but at me.”
“Thank heaven for that, sir. No harm will come to you through being smiled at. How I stray from my text! Well, sir, the wretch, in response to the encouragement of my smile, had the effrontery to ask me for my private address, upon which I smiled again. Ah, sir, 'tis diverting when the fly begins to lure on the spider.”
“'Tis vastly diverting, madam, I doubt not—to the fly.”
“Ay, and to the friends of the spider. But we shall let that pass. Sir, to be brief, I did not let the gentleman know that I had a private address, but I invited him to partake of supper with me on the next Thursday night.”
“Heavens! madam, you do not mean to tell me that your interest on my behalf——”
“Is sufficiently great to lead me to sup with a spider? Sir, I say that I am only interested in my sister-fly—would she be angry if she were to hear that such a woman as I even thought of her as a sister?”
There was a note of pathos in the question, which did not fall unnoticed upon Goldsmith's ear.