"Why, it is like a novel."
"A very unromantic one," replied Zoe.
"I don't know that. I have read very interesting novels with fewer new
characters than this: there's a dark beauty, and a fair, and a duenna
with an eagle eye and an aquiline nose."
"Hush!" said Zoe: "that is her room;" and pointed to a chamber door that
opened into the apartment.
Oh, marvelous female instinct! The duenna in charge was at that moment
behind that very door, and her eye and her ear at the key-hole, turn
about.
Severne continued his remarks, but in a lower voice.
"Then there's a woman-hater and a man-hater: good for dialogue."
Now this banter did not please Zoe; so she fixed her eyes upon Severne,
and said, "You forget the principal figure--a mysterious young gentleman
who looks nineteen, and is twenty-nine, and was lost sight of in England
nine years ago. He has been traveling ever since, and where-ever he went
he flirted; we gather so much from his accomplishment in the art; fluent,
not to say voluble at times, but no egotist, for he never tells you
anything about himself, nor even about his family, still less about the
numerous _affaires de coeur_ in which he has been engaged.
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