Much wisdom was imparted to her on the subject,
and she understood a little, and echoed hollow to the remainder, willing
to show entire docility as far as her intelligence consented to be awake.
She was in that stage of the dainty, faintly tinged innocence of the
amorousness of themselves when beautiful young women who have not been
caught for schooling in infancy deem it a defilement to be made to
appear other than the blessed nature has made them, which has made them
beautiful, and surely therefore deserves to be worshipped. The lectures
of the great ladies and Chloe's counsels failed to persuade her to use
the powder puff-ball. Perhaps too, as timidity quitted her, she enjoyed
her distinctiveness in their midst.
But the distinctiveness of a Duchess of Dewlap with the hair and cheeks
of our native fields, was fraught with troubles outrunning Mr. Beamish's
calculations. He had perceived that she would be attractive; he had not
reckoned on the homogeneousness of her particular English charms. A
beauty in red, white, and blue is our goddess Venus with the apple of
Paris in her hand; and after two visits to the Pump Room, and one
promenade in the walks about the Assembly House, she had as completely
divided the ordinary guests of the Wells into male and female in opinion
as her mother Nature had done in it sex. And the men would not be
silenced; they had gazed on their divinest, and it was for the women
to succumb to that unwholesome state, so full of thunder.
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