“Where are you going?” asked he, as I edged off sideways. I had already noticed that Mr. Hunsden indulged in abrupt forms of speech, and I perversely said to myself—

“He thinks he may speak as he likes to a poor clerk; but my mood is not, perhaps, so supple as he deems it, and his rough freedom pleases me not at all.”

I made some slight reply, rather indifferent than courteous, and continued to move away. He coolly planted himself in my path.

“Stay here awhile,” said he: “it is so hot in the dancing-room; besides, you don’t dance; you have not had a partner to-night.”

He was right, and as he spoke neither his look, tone, nor manner displeased me; my amour-propre was propitiated; he had not addressed me out of condescension, but because, having repaired 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 descent may be read in a distinctive cast of form and features?”

“Patrician descent be hanged! Who doubts that your lordlings may have their ‘distinctive cast of form and features’ as much as we – shire tradesmen have ours? But which is the best? Not theirs assuredly. As to their women, it is a little different: they cultivate beauty from childhood upwards, and may by care and training attain to a certain degree of excellence in that point, just like the oriental odalisques. Yet even this superiority is doubtful. Compare the figure in that frame with Mrs. Edward Crimsworth – which is the finer animal?”

I replied quietly: “Compare yourself and Mr. Edward Crimsworth, Mr Hunsden.”

“Oh, Crimsworth is better filled up than I am, I know besides he has a straight nose, arched eyebrows, and all that; but these advantages – if they are advantages – he did not inherit from his mother, the patrician, but from his father, old Crimsworth, who, my father says, was as veritable a – shire blue-dyer as ever put indigo in a vat yet withal the handsomest man in the three Ridings. It is you, William, who are the aristocrat of your family, and you are not as fine a fellow as your plebeian brother by long chalk.”

There was something in Mr. Hunsden’s point-blank mode of speech which rather pleased me than otherwise because it set me at my ease. I continued the conversation with a degree of interest.

“How do you happen to know that I am Mr. Crimsworth’s brother? I thought you and everybody else looked upon me only in the light of a poor clerk.”

“Well, and so we do; and what are you but a poor clerk? You do Crimsworth’s work, and he gives you wages – shabby wages they are, too.”

I was silent. Hunsden’s language now bordered on the impertinent, still his manner did not offend me in the least – it only piqued my curiosity; I wanted him to go on, which he did in a little while.