Then why do you let Will Withers suppose so? All he can tell is what you
show him. If you will listen while he speaks, so as to answer
intelligently, and will then speak to him as if there were no other
persons in the room, he will know fast enough that you are talking to him.
But if you just say "yes," and "no," and "indeed," and "certainly," in
that flabby, languid way in which some boys and girls I know pretend to
talk sometimes, he will think that you are engaged in thinking of somebody
else, or something else,--unless, indeed, he supposes that you are not
thinking of anything, and that you hardly know what thinking is.

It is just as bad, when you are talking to another girl, or another girl's
mother, if you take to watching her hair, or the way she trimmed her
frock, or anything else about her, instead of watching what she is saying
as if that were really what you and she are talking for. I could name to
you young women who seem to go into society for the purpose of studying
the milliner's business. It is a very good business, and a very proper
business to study in the right place. I know some very good girls who
would be much improved, and whose husbands would be a great deal happier,
if they would study it to more purpose than they do. But do not study it
while you are talking. No,--not if the Empress EugA(C)nie herself should be
talking to you. [Footnote: This was written in 1869, and I leave it _in
memoriam._ Indeed, in this May of 1871, EugA(C)nie's chances of receiving
Clare at Court again are as good as anybody's, and better than some.]
Suppose, when General Dix has presented you and mamma, the Empress should
see you in the crowd afterwards, and should send that stiff-looking old
gentleman in a court dress across the room, to ask you to come and talk to
her, and should say to you, "Mademoiselle, est-ce que l'on permet aux
jeunes filles AmA(C)ricaines se promener A cheval sans cavalier?" Do you look
her frankly in the face while she speaks, and when she stops, do you