and make yourself
look a hundred years old?

JULIA.--My eyes are weak, Captain Touchit.

TOUCHIT.--Weak with weeping for Tom Flight. You hypocrite! Show me your
eyes!

MISS P.--Nonsense!

TOUCHIT.--Show me your eyes, I say, or I'll tell about Tom Flight and
that he has been married at Madras these two years.

MISS P.--Oh, you horrid man! [takes glasses off.] There.

TOUCHIT.--Translucent orbs! beams of flashing light! lovely lashes
veiling celestial brightness! No, they haven't cried much for Tom
Flight, that faithless captain! nor for Lawrence O'Reilly, that killing
Editor. It is lucky you keep the glasses on them, or they would transfix
Horace Milliken, my friend the widower here. DO you always wear them
when you are alone with him?

MISS P.--I never AM alone with him. Bless me! If Lady Kicklebury thought
my eyes were--well, well--you know what I mean,--if she thought her
son-in-law looked at me, I should be turned out of doors the next day,
I am sure I should. And then, poor Mr. Milliken! he never looks at
ME--heaven help him! Why, he can't see me for her ladyship's nose and
awful caps and ribbons! He sits and looks at the portrait yonder, and
sighs so. He thinks that he is lost in grief for his wife at this very
moment.

TOUCHIT.--What a woman that was--eh, Julia--that departed angel! What a
temper she had before her departure!

MISS P.--But the wind was tempered to the lamb. If she was angry--the
lamb was so very lamblike, and meek, and fleecy.

TOUCHIT.--And what a desperate flirt the departed angel was! I knew
half a dozen fellows, before her marriage, whom she threw over, because
Milliken was so rich.

MISS P.--She was consistent at least, and did not change after marriage,
as some ladies do; but flirted, as you call it, just as much as before.
At Paris, young Mr. Verney, the attache, was never out of the house:
at Rome, Mr. Beard, the artist, was always drawing pictures of her:
at Naples, when poor Mr. M. went away to look after his affairs at St.
Petersburg, little Count Posilippo was for ever coming to learn English
and practise duets. She scarcely ever saw the poor children--[changing
her manner as Lady KICKLEBURY enters] Hush--my lady!

TOUCHIT.--You may well say, "poor children," deprived of such a woman!
Miss Prior, whom I knew in very early days--as your ladyship knows--was
speaking--was speaking of the loss our poor friend sustained.

LADY K.--Ah, sir, what a loss! [looking at the pict