"That face of Marie Antoinette's," said Mr. Carleton smiling, "is an undisciplined one--uneducated."
"Uneducated!" exclaimed Mrs. Carleton.
"Don't mistake me, mother,--I do not mean that it shows any want of reading or writing, but it does indicate an untrained character--a mind unprepared for the exigencies of life."
"She met those exigencies indifferent well too," observed Mr. Thorn.
"Ay--but pride, and the dignity of rank, and undoubtedly some of the finer qualities of a woman's nature, might suffice for that, and yet leave her utterly unfitted to play wisely and gracefully a part in ordinary life."
"Well, she had no such part to play," said Mrs. Carleton.
"Certainly, mother--but I am comparing faces."
"Well--the other face?"
"It has the same style of refined beauty of feature, but--to compare them in a word, Marie Antoinette looks to me like a superb exotic that has come to its brilliant perfection of bloom in a hot-house--it would lose its beauty in the strong free air--it would change and droop if it lacked careful waiting upon and constant artificial excitement;--the other," said Mr. Carleton musingly,--is a flower of the woods, raising its head above frost and snow and the rugged soil where fortune has placed it, with an air of quiet patient endurance;--a storm wind may bring it to the ground, easily--but if its gentle nature be not broken, it will look up again, unchanged, and bide its time in unrequited beauty and sweetness to the end."
"The exotic for me!" cried Rossitur,--"if I only had a place for her. I don't like pale elegancies."