CHAPTER XIX 249
" I like to observe all the faces and all the figures."
" But do you never single one from the rest-- or it may be, two?"
" I do frequently; when the gestures or looks of a pair seem telling a tale: it amuses me to watch them."
" What tale do you like best to hear?"
" Oh, I have not much choice! They generally run on the same theme-- courtship; and promise to end in the same catastrophe-- marriage."
" And do you like that monotonous theme?" " Positively, I don ' t care about it: it is nothing to me."
" Nothing to you? When a lady, young and full of life and health, charming with beauty and endowed with the gifts of rank and fortune, sits and smiles in the eyes of a gentleman you-- "
" I what?" " You know-- and perhaps think well of."
" I don ' t know the gentlemen here. I have scarcely interchanged a syllable with one of them; and as to thinking well of them, I consider some respectable, and stately, and middle-aged, and others young, dashing, handsome, and lively: but certainly they are all at liberty to be the recipients of whose smiles they please, without my feeling disposed to consider the transaction of any moment to me."
" You don ' t know the gentlemen here? You have not exchanged a syllable with one of them? Will you say that of the master of the house!"
" He is not at home."