"No matter if it were your twenty-ninth; we will anticipate no feelings
by discussion and conversation; we will not talk about love."

"Indeed, indeed!" said she--all in hurry and heat--"you may think to
check and hold me in, as much as you please; but I _have_ talked about
it, and heard about it too; and a great deal and lately, and
disagreeably and detrimentally: and in a way you wouldn't approve."

And the vexed, triumphant, pretty, naughty being laughed. I could not
discern what she meant, and I would not ask her: I was nonplussed.
Seeing, however, the utmost innocence in her countenance--combined with
some transient perverseness and petulance--I said at last,--

"Who talks to you disagreeably and detrimentally on such matters? Who
that has near access to you would dare to do it?"

"Lucy," replied she more softly, "it is a person who makes me miserable
sometimes; and I wish she would keep away--I don't want her."

"But who, Paulina, can it be? You puzzle me much."

"It is--it is my cousin Ginevra. Every time she has leave to visit Mrs.
Cholmondeley she calls here, and whenever she finds me alone she begins
to talk about her admirers. Love, indeed! You should hear all she has
to say about love."

"Oh, I have heard it," said I, quite coolly; "and on the whole, perhaps
it is as well you should have heard it too: it is not to be regretted,
it is all right. Yet, surely, Ginevra's mind cannot influence yours.
You can look over both her head and her heart."

"She does influence me very much. She has the art of disturbing my
happiness and unsettling my opinions. She hurts me through the feelings
and people dearest to me."

"What does she say, Paulina? Give me some idea. There may be
counteraction of the damage done."

"The people I have longest and most esteemed are degraded by her. She
does not spare Mrs. Bretton--she does not spare.... Graham."

"No, I daresay: and how does she mix up these with her sentiment and
her...._love_? She does mix them, I suppose?"

"Lucy, she is insolent; and, I believe, false. You know Dr. Bretton. We
both know him. He may be careless and proud; but when was he ever mean
or slavish? Day after day she shows him to me kneeling at her feet,
pursuing her like her shadow. She--repulsing him with insult, and he
imploring her with infatuation. Lucy, is it true? Is any of it true?"

"It may be true that he once thought her handsome: does she give him
out as still her suitor?"

"She