"I feel quite alarmed," said Harold to Weir, as the door closed behind her father. "Do you suppose he is going to tell me that I do not give satisfaction?"
"Harold!" exclaimed Weir, reprovingly, "I wish you would not talk as if you were a butler; you look much more dignified than you ever talk. You look like an English nobleman, and you talk like any ordinary young man about town."
"My dearest girl, would you have me a Sir Charles Grandison? The English nobleman of your imagination is the gentleman who perambulates the pages of Miss Burney's novels. The present species and the young man about town are synonymous animals."
"There you are again! You always make me laugh; I cannot help that; but I wish you would do yourself justice, nevertheless. You may not know it, but if you would only put on a ruff and satin doublet and hose and wig, and all the rest of it, you would look exactly like one of the courtiers of the court of Queen Elizabeth. You are a perfect type of the English aristocrat."
"My dear Lady Jane Grey, if you had been an American girl, you would have said a perfect gentleman, and I should never have spoken to you again. As a matter of fact, I always feel it a sort of sacrilege that I do not address you in blank verse; only my attempts thereat are so very bad. But it is never too late to mend. We will read Pope together, Shakespeare, and all the rest of the old boys. We will saturate our minds with their rhythm, and we will thereafter communicate in stately phrase and rolling periods."
"It would be a great deal better than slang and 'facetiousness,' as you call it. That is all very well for Lord Bective Hollington; it suits him; but you should aim at a higher standard."
Dartmouth, who was standing by the chimney-piece near the chair on which she was sitting, put his hand under her chin and raised her face, smiling quizzically as he did so.
"My dear child," he said, "you are too clever to fall into the common error of women, and idealize your lover. The tendency is a constituent part of the feminine nature, it is true. The average woman will idealize the old tweed coat on her lover's back. But your eyes are too clear for that sort of thing. I am a very ordinary young man, my dear. Becky is twice as clever—"
"He is not!" burst in Weir, indignantly. "A man who can do nothing but chaff and joke and talk witty nonsense!"
"If you knew him better you would know that under all that persiflage there is much depth of feeling and passion. I do not claim any unusual amount of intellectuality for him, but he has a wonderful supply of hard common-sense, and remarkably quick perceptions. And I have great respect for his judgment."