“I heard a great deal about her at Saratoga last summer, where I happened to stop for a few days. Every body was talking about her beauty, talents and accomplishments, and in particular about her plain and simple manners, so singular in an heiress and a belle. The young men, mostly, seemed to have been afraid of her; regarding her as a female Caligula who would have rejoiced in the power of decapitating all the silliness, stupidity and puppyism in the world with one stroke of her wit.”
“Indeed!” said Sutton, with a weak laugh that proved him not to apprehend what he was laughing at; “I hope she’ll soon come along; I’m prepared for a dead set at her. Girls of two or three hundred thousands are worth that trouble; it’s a much pleasanter way to get pocket money than to be playing the dutiful son for it.”
Wallis elevated his eyebrows, but made no other reply.
“That, I suppose, is one of your village beauties,—that one walking in the garden with the pink dress on and the black apron,” resumed Sutton.
“No; she is a stranger boarding here,—a Miss Thompson.”
“Miss Thompson!—it might as well be Miss Blank for all the idea that conveys. Who, or what is she?”
“She does not say;—there is the name in the register beside you,—‘Mrs. Thompson and daughter’—so she entered it. She and her mother stopped here a week or two ago, on account of the lady’s health.”
“Thompsons!—they oughtn’t to be found at out-of-the-way places; all the genteel Thompsons that I ever heard of go to springs and places of decided fashion; it is absolutely necessary, that they may not be confounded with the mere Thompsons,—the ten thousand of the name. But that is a pretty looking girl,—and rather ladyish.”
“She is a lady—a well-bred, sensible girl, as ever I met with, and very highly educated.”
They were interrupted by the bell for tea, and, on entering the eating-room, they found the young lady in the pink dress at the table, with an elderly, delicate looking woman (Mrs. Thompson, of course,) beside her. Mr. Sutton advanced to the place immediately opposite to her, and a nearer view suggested that she might be one of the genteel Thompsons after all. She was a spirited looking girl, rather under the middle height, with a clear and brilliant, though not very fair complexion; large black eyes, surmounted by wide and distinctly marked eyebrows, and a broad, smooth forehead; a nose, (that most difficult of features, if we may judge by the innumerable failures,) a nose beautifully straight in its outline and with the most delicately cut nostrils possible; and the most charmingly curved lips, and the whitest teeth in the world. Having made these discoveries, Mr. Sutton decided that if her station should forbid his admiring her, he would not allow it to prevent her from admiring him. To afford her the benefit of this privilege, it was necessary that he should first attract her notice, for she had bestowed but a single glance at him on his entrance, as had her mother, the latter drawing up her eyelids as if she had been very near-sighted; and to affect this, he called, in a peremptory voice to the servant attending,