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204 fectly fitting dress, or a becoming bonnet; it is a snare, a lust of the eye, and as such to be shunned by honest, sober people! I have often seen a man looking with positive pleasure at his dowdy, ill-dressed wife; it gives him a comfortable feeling of safety, to think that he can put her down in the middle of a crowded public room, and be certain to find her there unmolested when he comes back. In fact, too much style is the devil (they think), and men are often afraid to marry a very pretty or elegant girl, because they think her morals cannot be quite what they should be, or that she will take too much trouble in looking after!"

"And I have heard that a girl can have no higher compliment than the dispraise of her own sex, and that when you hear them abusing and picking to pieces some particular woman, and assuring each other that she has not a good feature in her face, that her figure is padded, her complexion kept in a box, and that not even her eyelashes are her own, you may be quite sure she is good-looking, or fascinating, or uncommon: on the other hand, if you hear them praising some girl to the skies, you may be perfectly sure that she is meek, insipid, and tame, too uninteresting to be a rival, and too vapid to attract the attention of any one's lover, husband, or brother. Is that true?"

"Perfectly."

"Well, I can't understand that feeling. When I see anything beautiful, I love to look at it. I never used to weary of looking at Alice or Silvia Fleming."

"Silvia Fleming!" he exclaims, "where did you ever see her!”

"At Charteris."

"At the time Vasher was there?"

"Yes."

"Whew!" whistles George; "why he was in love with her; engaged to her some years ago; no one ever knew why the match was broken off. Vasher must be getting an old fellow by now."