"Probably not often; the diamond in some instances wants the graver; but it is the diamond. Nature seems now and then to have taken a princess's child and dropped it in some odd corner of the kingdom, while she has left the clown in the palace."
"From all which I understand," said Mr. Thorn, "that this little chestnut girl is a princess in disguise."
"Really, Carleton!" Rossitur began.
Mrs. Evelyn leaned back in her chair, and quietly eating a piece of apple, eyed Mr. Carleton with a look half amused and half discontented, and behind all that, keenly attentive.
"Take for example those two miniatures you were looking at last night, Mrs. Evelyn," the young man went on; "Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette what would you have more unrefined, more heavy, more animal, than the face of that descendant of a line of kings?"
Mrs. Evelyn bowed her head acquiescingly, and seemed to enjoy her apple.
"He had a pretty bad lot of an inheritance, sure enough, take it all together," said Rossitur.
"Well," said Thorn, "is this little stray princess as well- looking as t'other miniature?"
"Better, in some respects," said Mr. Carleton, coolly.
"Better!" cried Mrs. Carleton.