"I think there would be more than ever," said Margaret, carefully avoiding to meet her sister's eye. "I think so many mistakes would be explained, so many false impressions set right, on the instant of their being made, that our mutual relations would go on more harmoniously than now." "And what would you do with the affairs now dedicated to mystery?" asked Mr Enderby. "How would you deal with diplomacy, and government, and with courtship? You surely would not overthrow the whole art of wooing? You would not doom lovers' plots and devices?" The ladies were all silent. Mr Enderby, however, was determined to have an answer. He addressed himself particularly to Margaret. "You do not disapprove of the little hidden tokens with which a man may make his feelings secretly known where he wishes them to be understood;--tokens which may meet the eye of one alone, and carry no meaning to any other! You do not disapprove of a more gentle and mysterious way of saying, `I love you,' than looking full in one another's face, and declaiming it like a Quaker upon affirmation? You do not disapprove--" "As for disapproving," said Margaret, who chanced to perceive that Maria's hand shook so that she could not guide her needle, and that she was therefore apparently searching for something in her work-box,--"as for disapproving, I do not pretend to judge for other people--" She stopped short, struck with the blunder she had made. Mr Enderby hastened to take advantage of it. He said, laughing: "Well, then, speak for yourself. Never mind other people's case." "What I mean," said Margaret, with grave simplicity, "is, that all depends upon the person whose regard is to be won. There are silly girls, and weak women, who, liking mysteries in other affairs, are best pleased to be wooed with small artifices;--with having their vanity and their curiosity piqued with sly compliments--" "Sly compliments! What an expression!" "Such women agree, as a matter of course, in the old notion,--suitable enough five centuries ago,--that the life of courtship should be as unlike as possible to married life. But I certainly think those much the wisest and the happiest, who look upon the whole affair as the solemn matter that it really is, and who desire to be treated, from the beginning, with the sincerity and seriousness which they will require after they are married." "If the same simplicity and seriousness were common in this as are required in other grave transactions," said Hester, "there would be less of the treachery, delusion, and heart-breaking, which lie heavy upon the souls of many a man and many a woman." Mr Enderby, happening to be looking out of the window here, as if for something to say, caught the eye of his sister, who was walking in her garden. She beckoned to him, but he took no notice, not desiring to be disturbed at present. Turning again to Margaret, he said: "But you would destroy all the graces of courtship: you would--"