Sir Thomas does not use such strong language when speaking of Lady Gerard, but in other respects the portrait is not unfaithful. Lady Gerard is lying in an arm-chair. She is fat to make you shudder; she has a short, turn-up nose, short legs, a red skin, and next to no hair--all very good points in a pig, but hardly so good in a lady. The clock strikes, and at the same instant the butler opens the door, and announces "Dinner!" "Come along, Conny!" says Sir Thomas, sticking out his elbow to his ward. "Are not you going to wait for Miss Craven? And St. John is not down, either," suggests Lady Gerard, who is hoisting herself slowly up out of her chair. "Wait for 'em? Not I," responds Sir Roger de Coverley. "If people don't choose to conform to the rules of my house, they may go without their dinner for all I care, and serve 'em right, too. Come along, Conny!" The soup is nearly ended when two people, who have come together by a fortuitous concourse of atoms at the door, make a simultaneous entry into the dining-room. "Companions in iniquity!" says St. John, with a sarcastic look at his father, bowing to Esther, as he seats himself beside Miss Blessington. "How do?" says Sir Thomas, putting out his left hand (his right is still grasping his spoon). "Never wait for anybody here; would not let the soup get cold for the Queen nor the Lord Chancellor either." "Miss Craven mistook you for Sir Thomas before dinner," says Miss Blessington, in her sweet, smooth way to her neighbour. "Did she? Unintentional compliments are always the most flattering," replies Mr. Gerard, quietly. Then he looks across through the partition wall of great bigonias in silver pots, and sees a little face peeping at him under and over the broad crimson leaves. No one would ever call Esther's a Madonna face. No artist would ever ask her to sit for St. Catherine, or St. Cecilia, or St. Anybody else; hers is essentially _beauté du diable_--one of those little, sparkling, provoking, petulant faces that have a fresh dress of smiles or tears, or dimples or blushes, for every trivial, passing question; one of those little faces that have been at the bottom of half the mischiefs the world has seen. "I only saw a pair of legs," replies the face, exculpating itself; "how could I tell whether they were young or old legs?" Miss Blessington looks rather shocked, as if she thought that Esther's modes of expression were somewhat _libre;_ and indeed at the rate of purity at which we are advancing, _legs_ will soon walk off into the limbo of silence and unmentionableness; _arms_ will probably follow them, and then perhaps noses.