"But you will let me introduce you to Mrs. Fraser? You can know and like without admiring her. You will be struck with her conversation."
"Does she talk well?"
"She talks strangely—what Shakespeare calls 'matter and impertinency mixed.' Her shrewd discursiveness pleases me."
"Ah, Sir, you are willing to be pleased."
"I cannot help being pleased. Her musical prattle is very different from the sort of entertainment I am used to in other women. Dull decorous reason I can get anywhere. Her talk is rare as her beauty."
"A kind of mad talk, Sir."
"Mad, indeed! You shall hear her yourself and judge."
"Pray excuse me. I will take my pipe, and while you enjoy your tête-à-tête will search for curious objects on the beach."
"Be it so, then," said I, somewhat chagrined: for I wanted to witness this chilly sceptic melting into admiration before my beautiful neighbour's eyes.
There goes a disappointed man (thought I, as I watched him enter the house). His austerity cloaks some odd experience, I dare swear. Could I but see into his memory I might witness a strange drama being played in that little theatre. Some unconscionable jilt has soured the ripe juices of his nature; and now he spits venom at the whole sex. Yet he makes wry faces over his cynicism. I don't think he relishes it much. He argues, I suppose, that the coming of a wife will prove the going of his occupation. He has a rich young fellow under his charge and has no wish to surrender him to the keeping of a woman. So he directs his forked tongue at her in the hope that I shall be influenced. My little signor, you will be disappointed, if you hope this!