He coolly planted himself in my path.
"Stay here awhile," said he: "it is so hot in the dancing-room; besides, you don't dance; you have not had a partner to-night." He was right, and as he spoke neither his look, tone, nor manner displeased me; my AMOUR-PROPRE was propitiated; he had not addressed me out of condescension, but because, having repaired to the cool dining-room for refreshment, he now wanted some one to talk to, by way of temporary amusement.

I hate to be condescended to, but I like well enough to oblige; I stayed.
"That is a good picture," he continued, recurring to the portrait.
"Do you consider the face pretty ?" I asked.
"Pretty! no--how can it be pretty, with sunk eyes and hollow cheeks?
but it is peculiar; it seems to think.

You could have a talk with that woman, if she were alive, on other subjects than dress, visiting, and compliments." I agreed with him, but did not say so.

He went on.
"Not that I admire a head of that sort; it wants character and force; there's too much of the sen-si-tive (so he articulated it, curling his lip at the same time) in that mouth; besides, there is Aristocrat written on the brow and defined in the figure; I hate your aristocrats." "You think, then, Mr.Hunsden, that patrician descent may be read in a distinctive cast of form and features ?" "Patrician descent be hanged! Who doubts that your lordlings may have their 'distinctive cast of form and features' as much as we----shire tradesmen have ours?
But which is the best?
Not theirs assuredly.

As to their women, it is a little different: they cultivate beauty from childhood upwards, and may by care and training attain to a certain degree of excellence in that point, just like the oriental odalisques.
Yet even this superiority is doubtful.