CHAPTER VI.


"There is not a mystical creation, type, symbol, or poetical invention
for meanings abtruse, recondite, and incomprehensible which is not
represented by the female gender," said my father, having his hand quite
buried in his waistcoat. "For instance, the Sphinx and Isis, whose veil
no man had ever lifted, were both ladies, Kitty! And so was Persephone,
who must be always either in heaven or hell; and Hecate, who was one
thing by night and another by day. The Sibyls were females, and so were
the Gorgons, the Harpies, the Furies, the Fates, and the Teutonic
Valkyrs, Nornies, and Hela herself; in short, all representations of
ideas obscure, inscrutable, and portentous, are nouns feminine."

Heaven bless my father! Augustine Caxton was himself again! I began to
fear that the story had slipped away from him, lost in that labyrinth of
learning. But luckily, as he paused for breath, his look fell on those
limpid blue eyes of my mother, and that honest open brow of hers, which
had certainly nothing in common with Sphinxes, Fates, Furies, or
Valkyrs; and whether his heart smote him, or his reason made him own
that he had fallen into a very disingenuous and unsound train of
assertion, I know not, but his front relaxed, and with a smile he
resumed: "Ellinor was the last person in the world to deceive any one
willingly. Did she deceive me and Roland, that we both, though not
conceited men, fancied that, if we had dared to speak openly of love, we
had not so dared in vain; or do you think, Kitty, that a woman really
can love (not much, perhaps, but somewhat) two or three, or half a