'But surely,' said she, 'there's always an inspiration coming to it from
its partner in motion, if one of them takes the step.'

He signified a woeful negative. 'My dear young lady, you say dark things
to grey hairs!'

She rejoined: 'If we were over in England, and you fixed on me the stigma
of saying dark things, I should never speak without being thought
obscure.'

'It's because you flash too brightly for them.'

'I think it is rather the reminiscence of the tooth that received a stone
when it expected candy.'

Again the General laughed; he looked pleased and warmed. 'Yes, that 's
their way, that 's their way!' and he repeated her words to himself,
diminishing their importance as he stamped them on his memory, but so
heartily admiring the lovely speaker, that he considered her wit an
honour to the old country, and told her so. Irish prevailed up to
boiling-point.

Lady Dunstane, not less gratified, glanced up at Mr. Redworth, whose
brows bore the knot of perplexity over a strong stare. He, too, stamped
the words on his memory, to see subsequently whether they had a vestige
of meaning. Terrifically precocious, he thought her. Lady Dunstane, in
her quick sympathy with her friend, read the adverse mind in his face.
And her reading of the mind was right, wrong altogether her deduction of
the corresponding sentiment.