Varbarriere was lecturing this morning, according to his lights, more copiously and _ex cathedrâ_ than usual. Perhaps his declamations and antithesis represented the constraint which he placed on himself, like those mental exercises which sleepless men prescribe to wrest their minds from anxious and exciting preoccupations.
"Do you paint, sir?" asked Drayton, who was really interested.
"Bah! never. I can make just a little scratching with my pencil, enough to remind. But paint--oh--ha, ha, ha!--no. 'Tis an art I can admire; but should no more think to practise than the dance."
And the ponderous M. Varbarriere pointed his toe and made a mimic pirouette, snapped his fingers, and shrugged his round shoulders.
"Alas! sir, the more I appreciate the dance, the more I despair of figuring in the ballet, and so with painting. Perhaps, though, _you_ paint?"
"Well, I just draw a little--what you call scratching, and I have tried a little tinting; but I'm sure it's very bad. I don't care about fools, of course, but I should be afraid to show it to anyone who knew anything about it--to you, for instance," said Drayton, who, though conceited, had sense enough at times to be a little modest.
"What is it?" said Miss Blunket, skipping into the hall, with a pretty little basket on her arm, and such a coquettish little hat on, looking so naïve and girlish, and so remarkably tattooed with wrinkles. "Shall I run away--is it a secret?"
"Oh, no; we have no secrets," said Drayton.
"And won't you tell? I'm such a curious, foolish, wretched creature;" and she dropped her eyes like a flower-girl in a play.
What lessons, if we only could take them, are read us every hour! What a giant among liars is vanity! Here was this withered witch, with her baptismal registry and her looking-glass, dressing herself like a strawberry girl, and fancying herself charming!
"Ah, I know. Did Mr. Drayton show them to you?"
"No, Mademoiselle; I've not been so fortunate."
"He showed them to me, though. It's not any harm to tell, is it? and they really _are_--Well, I won't say all I think of them."
"I was just telling Monsieur Varbarriere, it is not everyone I'd show those drawings to. Was not I, Monsieur?" said Drayton, with a fine irony.