“Nanon, bring the butter,” cried Eugenie.
The young girl watched her cousin as he cut his sippets, with as much pleasure as a grisette takes in a melodrama where innocence and virtue triumph. Charles, brought up by a charming mother, improved, and trained by a woman of fashion, had the elegant, dainty, foppish movements of a coxcomb. The compassionate sympathy and tenderness of a young girl possess a power that is actually magnetic; so that Charles, finding himself the object of the attentions of his aunt and cousin, could not escape the influence of feelings which flowed towards him, as it were, and inundated him. He gave Eugenie a bright, caressing look full of kindness,—a look which seemed itself a smile. He perceived, as his eyes lingered upon her, the exquisite harmony of features in the pure face, the grace of her innocent attitude, the magic clearness of the eyes, where young love sparkled and desire shone unconsciously.
“Ah! my dear cousin, if you were in full dress at the Opera, I assure you my aunt’s words would come true,—you would make the men commit the mortal sin of envy, and the women the sin of jealousy.”
The compliment went to Eugenie’s heart and set it beating, though she did not understand its meaning.
“Oh! cousin,” she said, “you are laughing at a poor little country girl.”
“If you knew me, my cousin, you would know that I abhor ridicule; it withers the heart and jars upon all my feelings.” Here he swallowed his buttered sippet very gracefully. “No, I really have not enough mind to make fun of others; and doubtless it is a great defect. In Paris, when they want to disparage a man, they say: ‘He has a good heart.’ The phrase means: ‘The poor fellow is as stupid as a rhinoceros.’ But as I am rich, and known to hit the bull’s-eye at thirty paces with any kind of pistol, and even in the open fields, ridicule respects me.”
“My dear nephew, that bespeaks a good heart.”
“You have a very pretty ring,” said Eugenie; “is there any harm in asking to see it?”
Charles held out his hand after loosening the ring, and Eugenie blushed as she touched the pink nails of her cousin with the tips of her fingers.
“See, mamma, what beautiful workmanship.”