"Marmaduke is not calm enough in his temperament for anything so sedate as fishing; and I doubt whether he would think much of any sporting less exciting than a tiger hunt, or perhaps a boar hunt. What do you think of him?"
"I don't think at all of him. In one evening I am not able to form an opinion of any one; at least," checking herself, "not often. He didn't say anything remarkably brilliant, did he?"
"Brilliant! No."
"The only part of his conversation I remember is what he related of you and your side of bacon. I liked his manner of telling that. It was in a tone of real friendship."
"Yes, Marmaduke has a regard for me. But don't you think him superbly handsome?"
"I don't like handsome men."
This was said with perfect unaffectedness; but he raised his eyes quickly, and gave her just such a look as she remembered him to have given her once before, when they were talking of Leopardi, and it embarrassed her. Indeed, said to an ugly man, this had an equivocal sound: it was either a sarcasm or a declaration.
"You are singular, then," was his quiet reply.
"Why singular, in preferring brains to beauty? Are we women really, do you think, the children we are said to be, and only fit to be amused with dolls? That is not like your usual respect for our sex!"
"Come, come, you do not state the case fairly. The question is not, whether you or your sex prefer beauty to brains, but whether you prefer beauty to ugliness? It is curious to notice how this question is always confused in this way, by mixing up with it an element that does not properly belong to it. People say, 'Oh, a clever plain man before a handsome fool!' and then argue, as if all the plain men were necessarily clever, and all the handsome men imperatively fools."