A general grave affability of her eyes and smiles was taken for quiet pleasure in the scene.

Her fitful intentness of look when conversing with the older ladies told of the mind within at work upon what they said, and she was careful that plain dialogue should make her comprehensible to them.

Nature taught her these arts, through which her wit became extolled entirely on the strength of her reputation, and her beauty did her service by never taking aim abroad.

They are the woman's arts of self-defence, as legitimately and honourably hers as the manful use of the fists with a coarser sex.

If it had not been nature that taught her the practice of them in extremity, the sagacious dowagers would have seen brazenness rather than innocence--or an excuseable indiscretion--in the part she was performing.