Page:The Professor (1857 Volume 1).djvu/55

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
the professor.
43

to the cool dining room for refreshment, he now wanted some one to talk to, by way of temporary amusement. I hate to be condescended to, but I like well enough to oblige: I stayed.

"That is a good picture," he continued, recurring to the portrait.

"Do you consider the face pretty?" I asked.

"Pretty! no—how can it be pretty with sunk eyes and hollow cheeks? but it is peculiar; it seems to think. You could have a talk with that woman, if she were alive, on other subjects than dress, visiting, and compliments."

I agreed with him—but did not say so. He went on.

"Not that I admire a head of that sort; it wants character and force; there's too much of the sen-si-tive (so he articulated it, curling his lip at the same time) in that mouth; besides there is Aristocrat written on the brow and defined in the figure; I hate your aristocrats."

"You think then, Mr. Hunsden, that patrician