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268 set down second to it. There never was a greater fallacy. Now if I had a wife, her good looks would be the last thing I should care to hear commented on. It would give me no pleasure to hear people exclaiming, 'How pretty she is!' 'How beautifully she dances!' but if they said, 'She is a thorough little lady,' 'She is sensible and charming,' 'She is good,' I should be proud of her, and in nothing so much as this, that no one would dare offer her the smallest liberty, in look or word."

"Are you reading me this homily on the beauty of goodness versus the goodness of beauty, to comfort my forlornness?" I ask, laughing. "Indeed, you need not: I have quite grown used to not being pretty like the rest."

"Pretty," he says, staring at my face, "can you be so?" He checks himself, and breaks off. "I see your brothers are smoking," he says presently, "may I?”

"Yes."

I look around me. Mrs. Lister is fast asleep, propped up against a neighbouring tree. Her mouth is wide open, and the flies are walking in out of the same as seemeth good to them. Her daughters are pursuing their up-hill, one-sided flirtations; and the head of the elder is wobbling plaintively towards Captain Brabazon's shrinking shoulder, in a manner that seems to say, "let me lay it down, and leave it." Mrs. Fleming is reading a letter, and her squire—Mr. Silvestre—lies on his back by her side, deeply, soundly, noisily asleep. Silvia is telling her fortune on a spike of grass, and looking with lovely, lazy eyes at Sir George, whose face aflame with love, pleading, and God alone knows what. Fane's cheek rests contentedly on Milly's elaborate chignon; and Alice, leaning against Charles's broad back, listens to Lord St. John's mild conversation and flatteries with half-shut eyes. The content on Paul's face is good to behold, when he has his cigar fairly between his