y fickle
tastes, I had anticipated, I one day took it upon me to make serious
inquiries as to whether the gentleman was such as her parents, and
especially her uncle--on whom, it appeared, she was dependent--would be
likely to approve. She allowed that this was very doubtful, as she did
not believe "Isidore" had much money.

"Do you encourage him?" I asked.

"Furieusement sometimes," said she.

"Without being certain that you will be permitted to marry him?"

"Oh, how dowdyish you are! I don't want to be married. I am too young."

"But if he loves you as much as you say, and yet it comes to nothing in
the end, he will be made miserable."

"Of course he will break his heart. I should be shocked and,
disappointed if he didn't."

"I wonder whether this M. Isidore is a fool?" said I.

"He is, about me; but he is wise in other things, a ce qu'on dit. Mrs.
Cholmondeley considers him extremely clever: she says he will push his
way by his talents; all I know is, that he does little more than sigh
in my presence, and that I can wind him round my little finger."

Wishing to get a more definite idea of this love-stricken M. Isidore;
whose position seemed to me of the least secure, I requested her to
favour me with a personal description; but she could not describe: she
had neither words nor the power of putting them together so as to make
graphic phrases. She even seemed not properly to have noticed him:
nothing of his looks, of the changes in his countenance, had touched
her heart or dwelt in her memory--that he was "beau, mais plutot bel
homme que joli garcon," was all she could assert. My patience would
often have failed, and my interest flagged, in listening to her, but
for one thing. All the hints she dropped, all the details she gave,
went unconsciously to prove, to my thinking, that M. Isidore's homage
was offered with great delicacy and respect. I informed her very
plainly that I believed him much too good for her, and intimated with
equal plainness my impression that she was but a vain coquette. She
laughed, shook her curls from her eyes, and danced away as if I had
paid her a compliment.

Miss Ginevra's school-studies were little better than nominal; there
were but three things she practised in earnest, viz. music, singing,
and dancing; also embroidering the fine cambric handkerchiefs which she
could not afford to buy ready worked: such mere trifles as lessons in
history, geography, grammar, and arithmetic, s