cy her saying, you see them because you love me. She
wore her hair in a plain knot, peculiarly neatly rounded away from
the temples, which sometimes gave to a face not aquiline a look of
swiftness. The face was mobile, various, not at all suggestive of bad
temper, in spite of her frowns. The profile of it was less assuring than
the front, because of the dark eyebrows' extension and the occasional
frown, but that was not shared by the mouth, which was, I admitted to
myself, a charming bow, running to a length at the corners like her
eyebrows, quick with smiles. The corners of the mouth would often be in
movement, setting dimples at work in her cheek, while the brows remained
fixed, and thus at times a tender meditative air was given her that I
could not think her own. Upon what could she possibly reflect? She had
not a care, she had no education, she could hardly boast an idea--two
at a time I was sure she never had entertained. The sort of wife for a
fox-hunting lord, I summed up, and hoped he would be a good fellow.

Peterborough was plied by the squire for a description of German women.
Blushing and shooting a timid look from under his pendulous eyelids
at my aunt, indicating that he was prepared to go the way of tutors at
Riversley, he said he really had not much observed them.

'They're a whitey-brown sort of women, aren't they?' the squire
questioned him, 'with tow hair and fish eyes, high o' the shoulder,
bony, and a towel skin and gone teeth, so I've heard tell. I've heard
that's why the men have all taken to their beastly smoking.'

Peterborough ejaculated: 'Indeed! sir, really!' He assured my aunt
that German ladies were most agreeable, cultivated persons, extremely
domesticated, retiring; the encomiums of the Roman historian were as
well deserved by them in the present day as they had been in the past;
decidedly, on the whole, Peterborough would call them a virtuous race.

'Why do they let the men smoke, then?' said the squire. 'A pretty
style o' courtship. Come, sit by my hearth, ma'am; I 'll be your
chimney--faugh! dirty rascals!'

Janet said: 'I rather like the smell of cigars.'

'Like what you please, my dear--he'll be a lucky dog,' the squire
approved her promptly, and asked me if I smoked.

I was not a stranger to the act, I confessed.

'Well'--he took refuge in practical philosophy--'a man must bring some
dirt home from every journey: only don't smoke me out, mercy's sake.'

Here was a hint of