“Hollow smiles—heartless professions! Why, what is all this tirade about, Charlotte?” interrupted Lucia, indignantly. “I do not understand you. You surely do not mean to class me with those frivolous beings you have named.”
“It will do for young coxcombs and fops,” continued Charlotte, “whose brains centre in an elegant moustache or the tie of a cravat, who swear pretty little oaths, and can handle their quizzing glass with more skill than their pen—it will do for them to inflate their vanity by the sighs of romantic school-girls; but for a high-minded, noble woman, like you, Lucia, to descend from the dignity of your position to the contemptible artifices of a coquette—fie, Lucia, be yourself.”
“From no other but you, Charlotte,” she replied, “would I bear the unjust imputation you cast upon me, and I should blush did I think myself deserving one half your censure. I do not feel that I have descended at all from the ‘dignity of my position,’ as you are pleased to term it, and consider a coquette quite as contemptible as you do.”
“Ah, Lucia,” said Charlotte, archly,
“O wad some power the giftie gie us,
To see oursel’s as ithers see us.”
“Nonsense! I know I am not a coquette, Charlotte,” retorted Lucia. “Gay and thoughtless I may have been; but I have never, nor would I ever, trifle with the affections of one whom I thought any other feeling but his own vanity had brought to my feet. But come, Madam Mentor, I will make a truce with you. I must first vanquish this redoubtable Gadsby, in honorable warfare, and with his own weapons, and then, I promise you, no duenna of old Spain ever wore a more vinegar aspect than shall Lucia Laurence, spinster.”
“But, Lucia—”
“No—no—no! stop! I know what you are going to say,” interrupted the gay girl, playfully placing her little hand over the mouth of her friend. “Positively I must have my way this time. And now for the business of the toilet. Let me see—blue and pearls; no, white—white, like a bride, Charlotte!”
——