eye - quickening therein a derisive, ireful sparkle; he laughed: -
    »I think,« he said, »I will lay my turban on my wonted altar of offerings;
there, at any rate, it would be certain to find favour: no grisette has a more
facile faculty of acceptance. Strange! for after all, I know she is a girl of
family.«
    »But you don't know her education, Dr. John,« said I. »Tossed about all her
life from one foreign school to another, she may justly proffer the plea of
ignorance in extenuation of most of her faults. And then, from what she says, I
believe her father and mother were brought up much as she has been brought up.«
    »I always understood she had no fortune; and once I had pleasure in the
thought,« said he.
    »She tells me,« I answered, »that they are poor at home; she always speaks
quite candidly on such points: you never find her lying, as these foreigners
will often lie. Her parents have a large family: they occupy such a station and
possess such connections as, in their opinion, demand display; stringent
necessity of circumstances and inherent thoughtlessness of disposition combined,
have engendered reckless unscrupulousness as to how they obtain the means of
sustaining a good appearance. This is the state of things, and the only state of
things she has seen from childhood upwards.«
    »I believe it - and I thought to mould her to something better: but, Lucy,
to speak the plain truth, I have felt a new thing to-night, in looking at her
and De Hamal. I felt it before noticing the impertinence directed at my mother.
I saw a look interchanged between them immediately after their entrance, which
threw a most unwelcome light on my mind.«
    »How do you mean? You have long been aware of the flirtation they keep up?«
    »Ay, flirtation! That might be an innocent girlish wile to lure on the true
lover; but what I refer to was not flirtation: it was a look marking mutual and
secret understanding - it was neither girlish nor innocent. No woman, were she
as beautiful as Aphrodite, who could give or receive such a glance, shall ever
be sought in marriage by me: I would rather wed a paysanne in a short petticoat
and high cap - and be sure that she was honest.«
    I could not help smiling. I felt sure he now exaggerated the case: Ginevra,
I was certain, was honest enough