“Hush!” replied Cissy; “you mustn’t say _that_. _There’s_ our beauty. If you talk of loveliness, I am sure you must be perfectly smitten with _that_,” nodding towards Mrs. Merrywether as she spoke, and drawing his attention to the charms of that lady, who was _fair_, whereas Cissy herself was more of a brunette, and thus smoothing the way for another compliment.
“I don’t admire such light hair,” replied the gentleman, whose own _chevelure_ was of the sandiest; “and she wants expression; and her eyes are too far apart; and people’s skins should be even whiter than hers to admit of such _very_ low dresses.”
Why are ladies always pleased when _other_ ladies’ dresses are thought too low? Cissy was not above the prejudices of her sex. She gave him a bewitching smile, and called him “a ridiculous creature.”
Even Mr. Sawyer could not misinterpret such signs of favour. Whatever Miss Mexico may have _thought_, she had never called him “a ridiculous creature” in her life.
“What I admire,” he proceeded, stealing a look at Miss Cissy as he enumerated her personal advantages, “is more colouring, darker hair, and arched eyebrows, and deeper eyes, long eyelashes, and altogether a fresher and brighter style of beauty; in short, I don’t think she would look at all well in a white dress with cherry-coloured trimmings.”
It was the very dress she wore herself. There was no mistake, thought the fair angler: she had _hooked_ him. So she gave him another of the captivating glances, and changed the conversation by drawing his attention to her fan, of which the fragrant sandal-wood only added fuel to his flame, while she turned to Struggles, who, having made an excellent dinner, was vainly endeavouring to talk to her about the coming ball.
Meanwhile, Mrs. Merrywether, whose most prejudiced detractor could not have accused her, at this juncture, of wanting _expression_, was forcing the running with the agreeable Brush. She was shaking her head, and making eyes, and showing her teeth, and flourishing her shoulders at him, with a degree of energy that must have been fatal to a less experienced campaigner. The Major, however, was proof against all the usual weapons of the female armoury. A confirmed flirt, it was his habit just to stop short of love-making with every woman he sat next to; but, if truth must be told, he never yet had seen one whose attractions he could place in comparison with his cutlet, his champagne, his claret, and his after-dinner cigar. A good-humoured, brainless, easy-going _bon-vivant_, it was the Major’s eventual destiny to marry a learned lady, with blue spectacles, under whose dynasty he faded away, and was lost to the world altogether. But with this, at present, we have nothing to do.