ed, quietly. "I
have been some time in the world, but I have never met with such a
character."

"I think your world has been a very limited one," she replied, and the
captain looked angry.

He had certainly hoped and intended to dazzle her with his worldly
knowledge, if nothing else. Yet how she despised his knowledge, and with
what contempt she heard him speak of his various experiences!

Nothing seemed to jar upon her and to irritate her as did his
affectations. She was looking one morning at a very beautifully veined
leaf, which she passed over to Miss Hastings.

"Is it not wonderful?" she asked; and the captain, with his eye-glass,
came to look at it.

"Are you short-sighted?" she asked him, abruptly.

"Not in the least," he replied.

"Is your sight defective?" she continued.

"No, not in the least degree."

"Then why do you use that eye-glass, Captain Langton?"

"I-ah-why, because everybody uses one," he replied.

"I thought it was only women who did that kind of thing--followed a
fashion for fashion's sake," she said, with some little contempt.

The next morning the captain descended without his eye-glass, and Miss
Hastings smiled as she noticed it.

Another of his affectations was a pretended inability to pronounce his
"t's" and "r's."

"Can you really not speak plainly?" she said to him one day.

"Most decidedly I can," he replied, wondering what was coming next.

"Then, why do you call 'rove' 'wove' in that absurd fashion?"

The captain's face flushed.

"It is a habit I have fallen into, I suppose," he replied. "I must break
myself of it."

"It is about the most effeminate habit a man can fall into," said Miss
Darrell. "I think that, if I were a soldier, I should delight in clear,
plain speaking. I cannot understand why English gentlemen seem to think
it fashionable to mutilate their mother tongue."

There was no chance of their ever agreeing--they never did even for one
single hour.

"What are you thinking about, Pauline?" asked Miss Hastings one day.

Her young pupil had fallen into a reverie over "The History of the
Peninsular War."

"I am thinking," she replied, "that, although France boasts so much of
her military glory, England has a superior army; her soldiers are very
brave; her officers the truest gentlemen."

"I am glad to hear that you think so. I have often wondered if you would
take our guest as a sample."

Her beautiful lips curled with unutterable contempt.

"Ce