After all, who would have looked for such bitter satire from a creature so young, and so exquisitely beautiful ?" "You are thinking of me," she said, bending her dark eyes on me, as if she meant to pierce through my very soul.
"I certainly was," I replied, with some embarrassment at the determined suddenness of the question, and then, endeavouring to give a complimentary turn to my frank avowal--"How is it possible I should think of anything else, seated as I have the happiness to be ?" She smiled with such an expression of concentrated haughtiness as she alone could have thrown into her countenance.

"I must inform you at once, Mr.Osbaldistone, that compliments are entirely lost upon me; do not, therefore, throw away your pretty sayings--they serve fine gentlemen who travel in the country, instead of the toys, beads, and bracelets, which navigators carry to propitiate the savage inhabitants of newly-discovered lands.

Do not exhaust your stock in trade;--you will find natives in Northumberland to whom your fine things will recommend you--on me they would be utterly thrown away, for I happen to know their real value." I was silenced and confounded.
"You remind me at this moment," said the young lady, resuming her lively and indifferent manner, "of the fairy tale, where the man finds all the money which he had carried to market suddenly changed into pieces of slate.

I have cried down and ruined your whole stock of complimentary discourse by one unlucky observation.

But come, never mind it--You are belied, Mr.Osbaldistone, unless you have much better conversation than these _fadeurs,_ which every gentleman with a toupet thinks himself obliged to recite to an unfortunate girl, merely because she is dressed in silk and gauze, while he wears superfine cloth with embroidery.