“Beautiful, intellectual, and agreeable as you are, Miss Mortimer,” observed the nobleman, “it is utterly impossible that you can feel yourself indebted to an old man like me for the recreation of a leisure hour. You would only need to throw open your drawing-rooms to the élite of Paris,to be surrounded by admiring guests.”
“And what if I prefer an hour of intellectual conversation to an entire evening of empty formalities, ceremonial frivolities, and the inane routine of fashionable réunions?” asked Laura, with an affectation of candour which seemed most real—most natural.
“You possess a mind the strength and soundness of which surprise me,” exclaimed the Marquis of Delmour, enthusiastically. “How is it that, rich and beautiful, young and courted, as you are, you can have taken so just a view of the world,—that you have learnt to prefer solid enjoyments to artificial pleasures,—and that you can so well discriminate between the real on which the gay and giddy close their eyes, and the ideal or the unreal which they so much worship?”
“You would ask me, my lord, I presume, wherefore I dislike that turmoil of fashionable life which brings one in contact with persons who flatter in a meaningless manner, and who believe that a woman is best pleased with him who most skilfully gilds his pretty nothings. It is, my lord, because I do not estimate the world according to the usual standard,—because I am not dazzled by outside glitter and external show. If an officer in the army be introduced to me, I am not captivated by his splendid epaulets and his waving plumes: I wait to hear his discourse before I form my estimate of his character.”
“Then neither youth nor riches will prove the principal qualifications of him who shall be fortunate enough to win your hand?” said the Marquis, fixing his eyes in an impassioned manner upon the syren.
“Oh! you would speak to me upon the topic of marriage!” exclaimed Laura, laughing gaily. “To tell your lordship the truth, I should be sorry to surrender up my freedom beyond all possibility of release, to any man in existence.”
“What!” ejaculated the old nobleman: “do you mean me to infer that you will never marry?”
“I have more than half made up my mind to that resolution,” responded Laura, casting down her eyes and forcing a blush to her cheeks.
“Never marry!” cried the Marquis, in unfeigned surprise. “And what if you happened to fall in love with some fine, handsome, eligible young man?”
“In the first place it is by no means necessary that a man should be fine, handsome, or young for me to love him,” answered Laura, as if in the most ingenuous way in the world; “and when I do love, it is not a whit the more imperious that the person or the priest should rivet my hand to that of the object of my affections. It is within the power of man to unite hands—and that is a mockery: but God alone can unite hearts—and that is a solemn and sacred compact that should be effected in the sight of heaven only.”