I was so much disconcerted at this sneering speech, that I said not a word; though I have since thought my vexation both stimulated and delighted him.
"The air we breathe here, however, Ma'am," continued he, very conceitedly, "though foreign to that you have been accustomed to, has not I hope been at variance with your health?"
"Mr. Lovel," said Lord Orville, "could not your eye have spared that question?"
"O, my Lord," answered he, "if health were the only cause of a lady's bloom, my eye, I grant, had been infallible from the first glance; but-"
"Come, come," cried Mrs. Mirvan, "I must beg no insinuations of that sort: Miss Anville's colour, as you have successfully tried, may, you see, be heightened; but, I assure you, it would be past your skill to lessen it."
"'Pon honour, Madam," returned he, "you wrong me; I presumed not to infer that rouge was the only succedaneum for health; but, really, I have known so many different causes for a lady's colour, such as flushing-anger-mauvaise honte-and so forth, that I never dare decide to which it may be owing."
"As to such causes as them there," cried the Captain, "they must belong to those that they keep company with."
"Very true, Captain," said Sir Clement; "the natural complexion has nothing to do with the occasional sallies of the passions, or any accidental causes."
"No, truly," returned the Captain: "for now here's me, why I look like any other man; just now; and yet, if you were to put me in a passion, 'fore George, you'd soon see me have as fine a high colour as any painted Jezebel in all this place, be she never so bedaubed."
"But," said Lord Orville, "the difference of natural and of artificial colour seems to me very easily discerned; that of nature is mottled and varying; that of art set, and too smooth; it wants that animation, that glow, that indescribable something, which, even now that I see it, wholly surpasses all my powers of expression."
"Your Lordship," said Sir Clement, "is universally acknowledged to be a connoisseur in beauty."
"And you, Sir Clement," returned he, "an enthusiast."
"I am proud to own it," cried Sir Clement; "in such a cause, and before such objects, enthusiasm is simply the consequence of not being blind."
"Pr'ythee, a truce with all this palavering," cried the Captain: "the women are vain enough already; no need for to puff 'em up more."