I
noticed that after an hour with the Creole he always looked tortured and
exhausted. With us he was artless to the tips of his awful finger-nails.
Nor was Mrs. Fontenette a skilful dissembler; she over-concealed things so
revealingly. Then she was so helplessly enamoured and in so childish a
way. I venture one of the penalties almost any woman may have to pay for
bringing to the altar only the consent to be loved is to find herself,
some time, at last, far from the altar, a Titania, a love's fool. Our
Titania pointed us to the fact that the Baron's wife never tried to divert
his mind from the one pursuit that enthralled it; and she borrowed one of
our garden alleys in which to teach him--grace-hoops! He never caught one
from her nor threw one that she could catch; but, ah! with her coaxing and
commanding, her sweet taunting and reprimanding and his utter lack of
surprise at them, how much she betrayed! Fontenette came, learned in a few
throws, and was charmed with the toys--a genuine lover always takes to
them kindly--but Mrs. Fontenette was by this time tired, and she never
again felt rested when her husband mentioned the game.
Furthermore, their countenances!--hers and the entomologist's--especially
when in repose--you could read the depths of experience they had sounded,
by the lines and shadows that came and went, or stayed, as one may read
the depths of a bay by the passing of wind and light, day by day, over its
waters--particularly if the waters are not very deep.
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