s so long and
meagre that he looks more like an exclamation-point than a man. When
he appears before me in his yellow-gray riding costume, I am always
reminded of the great windspeil you gave me once, stepfather, who had
such long, high legs, I used to creep under them; and when he lies like
a windspeil at my feet, and squints at me, his eyes seem tied up in
knots, and I never know if he is really looking at me, or is about to
fall into a swoon. Now, stepfather, do you not find that Lord Elliot
does honor to my taste?"

"Certainly, and all the more because your choice proves that you
appreciate the true dignity and beauty of a man, and his outward
appearance seems to you comparatively insignificant."

"Alas, alas! now you begin also to attribute noble and exalted motives
to me," said Camilla pathetically. "No, no, stepfather, I am not so
sublime as you think, and I should not have married Lord Elliot if mamma
and myself had not both indulged the ardent wish to be released from
each other. Mamma is too young and too beautiful to be willing to have
a grown-up daughter who is not ugly by her side, and I was too old to
be locked up any longer in the nursery, so I stepped literally from the
nursery to the altar, and became the wife of Lord Elliot; so mamma and
myself were freed from the presence of each other, and I thought that
a time of joy and liberty would bloom for me. But, alas, I have only
changed my cage; formerly I was confined in a nursery, now my prison is
a temple, because my husband says I am too elevated, too angelic to come
in contact with the pitiful world. Ah. I long so for the world; I am so
thirsty for its pleasures, I would so gladly take full draughts of joy
from its golden cup! My husband comes and offers me a crystal shell,
filled with heavenly dew and ether dust, which is, I suppose, angels'
food, but he does not remark that I am hungering and thirsting to death.
Like King Midas, before whose thirsty lips every thing turned to gold,
and who was starving in the midst of all his glory, I beseech you,
stepfather, undertake the role of the barber, bore a hole and cry out in
it that I have ass's ears--ears as long as those of King Midas. Perhaps
the rushes would grow again and make known to my lord the simple fact,
which up to this time he refuses to believe, that I am indeed no angel,
and he would cease to worship me, and allow me to be gay and happy upon
the earth like every other woman. But come, come,