On hearing this heretic sentiment, Cornelius looked orthodox and shocked.
"Ridiculous!" he said, "who has put such ideas into your head?" He glanced suspiciously at Kate who hastily observed:
"I had nothing to do with it."
"Do you think I could not find that out alone?" I asked, laughing.
But Cornelius remained quite grave. Did I not know love was a most exalted feeling? That angels loved in Heaven, and that poor mortals could not do better than imitate them on earth? That love was the attribute of the female mind, its charm and its power? On these high moral grounds, he proceeded to give me an eloquent description of the universal passion. It was pure, it was noble, tender and enduring; it was light and very joyous; it had sweetness and great strength; it refined the mind; it purified the heart; and, though seemingly so exclusive, it filled to overflowing with the sense of universal charity. It was a chain of subtle and mysterious sympathies.
Here I rapidly passed my forefinger along his profile, and resting it on the tip of his nose, I said gravely:
"Kate! is it aquiline or Roman? Aquiline, I think."
On feeling and hearing this piece of impertinence, Cornelius turned round on me with such a start of vexation and wrath, that I jumped up, and ran off to the chair of Kate. She only laughed at her brother's discomfiture. He said nothing, but sat fuming alone on the sofa.
"Serve you right," she said, "why will you explain love philosophically to a girl of seventeen? Don't you see her hour is not come, and that if it were, she would know more than you could tell her?"
Cornelius sharply replied "that was not at all the question, but that when he spoke, he thought he might be listened to."