“Bon Dieu!—earwig!” interrupted mademoiselle: “is it possible that monsieur or any body dat has sense, can like dose earwig?”
“I do not remember,” answered Mr. Mountague, calmly, “ever to have professed any liking for earwigs.”
“Well, pity; you profess pity for them,” said Mr. Dashwood, “and pity, you know, is ‘akin to love.’—Pray, did your ladyship ever hear of the man who had a pet toad?”{5}
{Footnote 5: Vide Smellie’s Natural History, vol. ii.}
“Oh, the odious wretch!” cried Lady Augusta, affectedly; “but how could the man bring himself to like a toad?”
“He began by pitying him, I suppose,” said Dashwood. “For my part, I own I must consider that man to be in a most enviable situation whose heart is sufficiently at ease to sympathize with the insect creation.”
“Or with the brute creation,” said Mr. Mountague, smiling and looking at Fanfan, whose paw Dashwood was at this instant nursing with infinite tenderness.
“Oh, gentlemen, let us have no more of this, for Heaven’s sake!” said Lady Augusta, interposing, with affected anxiety, as if she imagined a quarrel would ensue. “Poor dear Fanfan, you would not have any body quarrel about you, would you, Fanfan?” She rose as she spoke, and, delivering the dog to Dashwood to be carried home, she walked towards the house, with an air of marked displeasure towards Mr. Mountague.
Her ladyship’s displeasure did not affect him as she expected. Her image—her gesture stamping upon the caterpillar, recurred to her lover’s mind many times in the course of the evening; and in the silence of the night, and whenever the idea of her came into his mind, it was attended with this picture of active cruelty.
“Has your ladyship,” said Mr. Mountague, addressing himself to Lady S——, “any commands for Mrs. Temple? I am going to ride over to see her this morning.”