Page:Southern Life in Southern Literature.djvu/158

140 "And Dion—who can he be?" says Isadora, twisting her satin sleeve between her fingers abstractedly.

"It is!—no, it is not!"

"I know, now!—but that don't suit!"

"Permit me to end your perplexity, ladies," says the oracle, "Cordelia is Miss Clare Lee, and Dion is Mr. Champ Effingham!" A general exclamation of surprise from all the ladies. They say:

"It suits him, possibly, but—"

"He may be the prince of wits; still it does not follow—"

"Certainly not, that—"

"Clare is not such a little saint!"

"Let me defend her," says a gentleman, smiling; "I grant you that 't is extravagant to call Mr. Effingham a thunderbolt—"

"Laughable."

"Amusing," say the gentlemen.

"Or the prince of modern wits," continues the counsel for the defense.

"Preposterous!"

"Unjust!" they add.

"But I must be permitted to say," goes on the chivalric defender of the absent, "that Miss Clare Lee fully deserves her character; the comparison of that lovely girl, ladies, to Cordelia—Cordelia, the sweetest of all Shakespeare's characters—seems to me nothing more than justice."

The gentlemen greet this with enthusiastic applause, for our little, long-lost-sight of heroine had subdued all hearts.

"As regards Mr. Effingham," adds Clare's knight, "I shall be pardoned for not saying anything, since he is not present."

"Then I will say something," here interposes a small gentleman, with a waistcoat reaching to his knees and profusely