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.
"Not in the brilliancy of her beauty, but in some of its characteristics;--better in its promise."
"Make yourself intelligible, for the sake of my nerves, Guy," said his mother. "Better looking than Marie Antoinette!"
"My unhappy cousin is said to be a fairy, ma'am," said Mr. Rossitur; "and I presume all this may be referred to enchantment."