"These are my daughters," he added, waving his hand around the blue-eyed, fair-haired group. "This, my cousin, Mr. Dudley," introducing the young gentleman. "These two, my boys; and this, my saucy niece, Bessy. Nay, Bessy, come forth and don't affect what you never felt in your life, namely, shyness." "Nay, my dear uncle," she answered, "I am not the least shy; but it was necessary to give you time to introduce all the generations of Adam, and to let this gentleman receive them into his cogitations. You did not tell me his name, however." This was a point which Mr. Thornton and I had not settled; but he answered, at once, with a shrewd twinkle of the eye,-- "Mr. Howard, my dear--Mr. Richard Howard. You are cousins, of course; for the Davenports, being related to all the best blood of England, must count cousinship with the Howards, beyond doubt. So make much of him, Bessy--make much of him." While her uncle had been speaking, Miss Davenport had surveyed me from head to foot, with an air which I must not call impudent nor even assured, but with a certain degree of saucy fun in the expression of her countenance, which I cannot say was altogether agreeable to me. I hate _piquante_ women, and would a great deal rather that a woman had no wit at all, than that her wit should trench upon her womanly qualities. A strong-minded woman is worse; for then the feminine characteristics are almost obliterated--though you are sure to find out the woman somewhere; but the next bad thing to that is the _piquante_ woman, whose wit overbears her tenderness. Still I was a little doubtful whether this was altogether the case with the fair lady before me; for, as soon as I perceived the way she scanned me,--and, being apparently rather short-sighted, she even put up a double eye-glass, to look at me more accurately,--I fixed my eyes quietly on her face, seeking to read something therein while she was examining me. The moment she detected me in so doing, the glass was removed, the eye-lids dropped, and a slight rosy colour came up in her cheeks, like day-dawn purpling the pale East. The next moment she said, as if in reply to her uncle's last words-- "My cousin is very welcome, then, to Virginia, Uncle Henry. God be praised, his name is Richard; for we have had Roberts enough in our race to extinguish any family under the sun." "And pray what have the Roberts done to be so slandered, Bessy?" asked the elderly gentleman who had been introduced to me as Mr. Hubbard, walking across the room and addressing her in a tone of fatherly kindness.