Thus happily possessed of the freedom of the room, Mr. Sutton turned over some books on a table, and at length remarked, when he had caught the eye of Miss Thompson, “These country villages are monstrously tiresome to persons accustomed to a city life.”
“Are they?” said she, and looked again on her book.
“They say that Saratoga is unusually thronged this year,” he resumed after a pause; “I had the pleasure of meeting with a young lady of your name there last summer;—indeed, I had quite a flirtation with her; perhaps she was a relation of yours—the daughter of old General Thompson of Virginia.”
“Not in the least,” said the young lady.
“Judge Thompson, of one of the New England states, was there, at the same time, with his daughters. Very elegant girls all of them,—quite belles. They are of a different family,—perhaps of yours?”
“No sir, they are not,” returned Miss Thompson, impatiently giving her reticule a swing, which raised Cupidon off his feet, that important character having laid siege to the tassels.
“Laissez aller, Cupidon! a thorough-bred Parisian animal, Miss,—he does not understand a word of English. He was a keepsake from a particular friend of mine, Baron Mont Tonnére. You may have met with the baron; he was quite a lion among our élite? By the by, a Miss Thompson came very near being the baroness,—she was one of the Thomas Thompsons of New York.”
No reply.
“One of the best families in the country,—the same as the B. B. Thompsons of Philadelphia, the Brown Thompsons of Charleston, and the Thoroughgood Thompsons of Boston.”
“You seem quite au fait to the Thompsons;” said the elder lady; and turning to her daughter, they resumed a conversation, which he had interrupted, about the lecture and the lecturer, Miss Thompson expressing a wish to see some of his productions, and her confidence that a person of his evidently cultivated taste must possess merit as a painter. Mr. Sutton, as is common with vain people, drawing his conclusions from his own practice, presumed, of course, that all their fine talking was specially aimed at his favor, and when the younger lady, in return for his occasional interpositions, gave him a disdainful glance of her full black eyes, he admired her art in displaying their brilliancy.