"
"Oh, I know, mamma! I only meant to keep Miss Harz from being
disappointed."
"Miss Harz has internal resources, I have no doubt," rejoined Madame La
Vigne; "and, even if she had not, I fear her duties would preclude much
longing for excitement.--It is a very onerous task you are undertaking,
my dear young lady, certainly," turning kindly to me. "Five ignorant
little Southern girls, well disposed but imperfectly trained, will fill
your hands to positive overflowing, I fear. You will find me exacting,
too, sometimes. I am sure I shall enjoy your society whenever you
choose to bestow it on me, and Colonel La Vigne as well."
To which declaration on the part of his wife, that gentleman responded
by laying his hand on his breast, complacently, and bowing profoundly
from his chair, ending the ceremony by a flourish of his delicate
cambric handkerchief, and the exhibition at the same time of a slender,
sickly, and peculiarly-shaped hand, decorated with an onyx seal-ring. He
looked the gentleman, however, unmistakably plain and peculiar as his
appearance was, and pompous and pretentious as was his manner.
If words could do the work of the photographer, I should like to show
him to my readers, as he appeared to me on that first interview; though
later his whole aspect underwent a change in my sight, reflected from
the cavernous depths within, so that, what seemed somewhat ludicrous in
the beginning, came to be solemnly serious and even sophistically
tragical and awful on later acquaintance.
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