"He is a skeptic, a gambler, a spendthrift; and a more heartlessless flirt never lived," averred Miss Augusta, who hated the whole of Ernest's sex—even the Chapter—pour cause.
"Gentlemen can't help seeming flirts sometimes, some women pay such attention to them," said Nina, with a mischievous laugh. "Poor Mr. Vaughn! I hope he's not as black as he is painted. His physiognomy tells a different tale; he is just my ideal of 'Ernest Maltravers.' How kind his eyes are; have you ever looked into them, Selina?"
Miss Ruskinstone gave an angry sneer, vouchsafing no other response.
"My dear Nina, how foolishly you talk, about looking into a young man's eyes," frowned her father. "I am surprised to hear you."
Her own eyes opened in astonishment. "Why mayn't I look at them? It is by the eyes that, like a dog, I know whom to like and whom to avoid."
"And pray does your prescience guide you to see a saint in a ruined Lion of the Chaussée d'Antin?" sneered Selina, with another contemptuous sniff.
"Not a saint. I'm not good enough to appreciate the race," laughed Nina. "But I do not believe your cousin to be all you paint him; or, at least, if circumstances have led him into extravagance, I have a conviction that he has a warm heart and a noble character au fond."
"We will hope so," said the Warden, meekly, with an expression which plainly said how vain a hope it was.
"I think we have wasted a great deal too much conversation on a thankless subject," said Selina, with asperity. "Don't you think it time, Mr. Gordon, for us to go to the Louvre?"
That day, as they were driving along the Boulevards, they passed Ernest with Bluette in his carriage going to the Pré Catalan: they all knew her, from having seen her play at the Odéon. Selina and Augusta turned down their mouths, and turned up their eyes. Gordon pulled up his collar, and looked a Brutus in spectacles. Nina colored, and looked vexed. Triumph glittered in Eusebius's meek eyes, but he sighed a pastor's sigh over a lost soul.