"No, she affects nothing. The material is admirable. It only needs to be refined, polished, and toned down. It's unlucky, colonel, but in this world every thing worth having is broken in pieces and mixed with something that one doesn't want. It's an even balance, good and bad; there's no use in going off into raptures about any thing. One thing is certain, though; this cousin of yours has character enough to supply material for a dozen Miss Primroses, without any visible diminution." "I should like to see her. I'll go to-morrow." "You'd better. But now tell me something more about your journey." And, in reply to his friend's questions, Morton proceeded to relate such incidents as had befallen him. CHAPTER VIII. Beauty is a witch Against whose charms faith melteth into blood. _D. Pedro_.--If thou wilt hold longer argument, Do it in notes. _Benedick_.--Now, _divine air_, now is his soul ravished. _Much Ado about Nothing_. Morton visited his cousin, Miss Fanny Euston, a guest, for a few days, at a friend's house in town. By good fortune, as he thought it, he found her alone; and, as he conversed with her, he employed himself--after a practice usual with him--in studying her character, and making internal comments upon it. These insidious reflections, condensed into a paragraph, would have been somewhat as follows:-- "A fine figure, and a very handsome face; but there is a lurking devil in her eye, and about the corners of her mouth." Here some ten minutes of animated dialogue ensued before his observations had shaped themselves into further results. "She is exceedingly clever; she knows how to think and act for herself. I should not like to cross her will. There is fire enough in her to make a hundred women interesting. She is none of our frosty New England beauties. She could love a man to the death, and hate him as well. She could be a heroine or a tigress. Every thing about her is wild and chaotic, the unformed elements of a superb woman." Here, the conversation having lasted a half hour or more, his imagination began to disturb the deductions of his philosophy, and he was no longer in a mood of just psychological analysis, when, to his vexation, his cousin's hostess, Miss Jones, entering, brought his _tete-a-tete_ to a close. She displayed a marvellous fluency of discourse, and was eloquent upon books, parties, paintings, and the opera. "I need not ask you, Mr. Morton, if you have seen Tennyson's new poem." "Yes--at the bookseller's." "But surely you have read it." "No, I am behind the age." "Then thank Heaven for it," exclaimed his unceremonious cousin; "for of all insipidity, and affectation, and fine-spun, wire-drawn trash, Tennyson carries away the palm. Every body reads him because he is the fashion, and every body admires him because he is the fashion. But he is a bubble, a film, a gossamer; there's nothing in him."