"Mr. Constantine, I don't like your opinion upon the ode I showed to you; I think it a very absurd opinion; or perhaps you did not understand me rightly?"
Miss Beaufort took up a book, that her unoccupied attention might not disturb their studies.
Euphemia resumed, with a more natural dimple, and touching his glove with the rosy points of her fingers, said,
"You are stupid at translation."
Thaddeus colored, and sat uneasily; he knew not how to evade this direct though covert attack.
"I am a bad poet, madam. Indeed, it would be dangerous even for a good one to attempt the same path with Sappho and Phillips."
Euphemia now blushed as deeply as the count, but from another motive. Opening her grammar, she whispered, "You are either a very dull or a very modest man!" and, sighing, began to repeat her lesson.
While he bent his head over the sheet he was correcting; she suddenly exclaimed, "Bless me, Mr. Constantine, what have you been doing? I hope you don't read in bed! The top of your hair is burnt to a cinder! Why, you look much more like one who has been in a fire than Miss Beaufort does."
Thaddeus put his hand to his head.
"I thought I had brushed away all marks of a fire, in which I really was last night."