"I wish you would not be so horridly coarse, mother; and if you don't drop that `Betsy' we shall quarrel," said the younger lady, who bore a sufficient likeness to the elder for anyone to have stamped them mother and daughter, though the latter was wanting in her parent's hardness of outline, being a magnificent specimen of womanly beauty. Dark and thoroughly classic of feature, large-eyed, full-lipped, perhaps rather too highly coloured, but this was carried off by the luxuriant black hair, worn in large ringlets flowing down either side of the rounded cheeks they half concealed, by her well-arched black brows and long dark lashes, which shaded her great swimming eyes. Her figure was perfect, and she was in full possession of the ripest womanly beauty, as she walked slowly and with haughty carriage along the cliff, beside the elder dame. Both ladies were dressed in the very height of the fashion, with enormous wide-spreading open bonnets, heavy with ostrich plumes, tightly-fitting dresses, with broad waistbands well up under the arms, loose scarves, long gloves and reticules ornamented with huge bows of the stiffest silk, like Brobdingnagian butterflies. "Horrid, coarse indeed! I suppose I mustn't open my mouth next," said the elder lady. "It would be just as well not," said the younger, "when we are out." "Then I shall open it as wide as I like, ma'am, and when I like, so now then, Betsy." "As you please; only if you do, I shall go home, and I shall not go to Assembly or ball with you. It was your wish that I should be Cora." "No, it wasn't. I wanted Coral, or Coralie, miss." "And I preferred Cora," said the younger lady with languid hauteur, as if she were practising a part, "and you are always blurting out Betsy." "Blurting! There's a way to speak to your poor mother, who has made the lady of you that you are. Carriages and diamonds, and grand dinners, and--" "The smell of the orange peel, and the candles, and the memory of the theatre tacked on to me. `Actress!' you can see every fine madam we pass say with her eyes, as she draws her skirt aside and turns from me as if I polluted the cliff. I've a deal to be proud of," cried the younger woman fiercely. "For heaven's sake, hold your tongue!" "Don't go on like that, Betsy--Cora, I mean, my dear. Let 'em sneer. If your poor, dear, dead father did keep a show--well, there, don't bite me, Bet--Cora--_theatre_, and make his money, it's nothing to them, and you'll make a marriage yet, as'll surprise some of 'em if you plays your cards proper!" "Mother!" "Say mamma, my dear, now; and do smooth down, my beauty. There, there, there! I didn't mean to upset you. There's Lord Carboro' coming. Don't let him see we've been quarrelling again. I don't know, though," she added softly, as she noticed her child's heightened colour and heaving bosom; "it do make you look so 'andsome, my dear." "Pish!"