e was
in love with him, though she appeared willing (what was so strange) to
quarrel with her family about him. He did n't see how she could really
care for him,--she seemed marked out by nature for so much greater
a fortune; and he used to say to her, "Ah, you don't--there's no use
talking, you don't--really care for me at all!" To which she answered,
"Really? You are very particular. It seems to me it's real enough if I
let you touch one of my fingertips! "That was one of her ways of being
insolent Another was simply her manner of looking at him, or at
other people (when they spoke to her), with her hard, divine blue
eye,--looking quietly, amusedly, with the air of considering (wholly
from her own point of view) what they might have said, and then turning
her head or her back, while, without taking the trouble to answer them,
she broke into a short, liquid, irrelevant laugh. This may seem to
contradict what I said just now about her taking the young lieutenant
in the navy seriously. What I mean is that she appeared to take him more
seriously than she took anything else. She said to him once, "At any
rate you have the merit of not being a shop-keeper;" and it was by this
epithet she was pleased to designate most of the young men who at that
time flourished in the best society of New York. Even if she had rather
a free way of expressing general indifference, a young lady is supposed
to be serious enough when she consents to marry you. For the rest,
as regards a certain haughtiness that might be observed in Geoigina
Gressie, my story will probably throw sufficient light upon it She
remarked to Benyon once that it was none of his business why she liked
him, but that, to please herself, she did n't mind telling him she
thought the great Napoleon, before he was celebrated, before he had
command of the army of Italy, must have looked something like him;
and she sketched in a few words the sort of figure she imagined
the incipient Bonaparte to have been,--short, lean, pale, poor,
intellectual, and with a tremendous future under his hat Benyon asked
himself whether _he_ had a tremendous future, and what in the world
Geoigina expected of him in the coming years. He was flattered at the
comparison, he was ambitious enough not to be frightened at it, and he
guessed that she perceived a certain analogy between herself and the
Empress Josephine. She would make a very good empress. That was true;
Georgina was remarkably imperial. Thi