With his arched eyebrow and Parnassian sneer."'
'I protest against the poet,' cried Mrs. Vereker, laughing; 'we always flirt in the very plainest prose. As for his eyebrows, they are adorable.'
Then the General arrived, as great a dandy as ever Poole turned out, and was in the drawing-room before Maud's gravity was at all re-established. 'And what was the laugh about?' he inquired.
'About a Parnassian sneer,' said Desvœux with great presence of mind; 'and where do you come from, General?'
'I have been calling at the Fotheringhams,' said the General; 'my intimacy with Mrs. Fotheringham does not incline me to wish to be one of her daughters.'
'Poor girls!' said Mrs. Vereker, 'we were commiserating them the other day, and saying how cruelly their mother treats them.'
'Ah!' said the General, 'she does indeed; actually makes the poor things do lessons all the morning. A certain gentleman, a friend of mine, I cannot tell you his name, went there the other day with the most serious intentions towards the little one, the one with yellow hair, and actually found them hard at work at Mill's "Logic."'
'Two women were grinding at the mill,' said Desvœux, 'and one was taken and the other left, I suppose?'
'I am afraid,' said Mrs. Vereker, 'that both were left. But fancy a woman who was also a logician! For my part, I consider it a great privilege to be as unreasonable as I choose.'
'The arguments of beauty,' said the General, 'are always irresistible; but I am quite for female education.'