"I am not altogether free from superstition, but my idea of the fates has never taken that particular form. Why should the peacock be a bird of evil omen? I can believe anything bad of the screech-owl or the raven—but the harmless ornamental peacock—surely he is innocent of our woes."
"I have known the most direful calamities follow the introduction of peacocks' feathers into a drawing-room—yet they are so tempting, one can hardly live without them."
"Really! Do you know that I have found existence endurable without so much as a tuft of down from that unmelodious bird?"
"Have you never longed for its plumage to give life and colour to your rooms?—such exquisite colour—such delicious harmony—I wonder that you, who have such artistic taste, can resist the fascination."
"I hope you have not found that pretty fan the cause of many woes?" said Mr. Hamleigh, smilingly, as the damsel posed herself in the early Italian manner, and slowly waved the bright-hued plumage.
"I cannot say that I have been altogether happy since I possessed it," answered Dopsy, with a shy downward glance, and a smothered sigh; "and yet I don't know—I have been only too happy sometimes, perhaps, and at other times deeply wretched."
"Is not that kind of variableness common to our poor human nature—independent of peacocks' feathers?"
"Not to me. I used to be the most thoughtless happy-go-lucky creature."
"Until when?"
"Till I came to Cornwall," with a faint sigh, and a sudden upward glance of a pair of blue eyes which would have been pretty, had they been only innocent of all scheming.