For certainly denunication and argument became Diana--all the more that
she was no "female franzy" who must have all the best of the talk; she
listened--she evoked--she drew on, and drew out. Mrs. Colwood was
secretly sure that this very modest and ordinarily stupid young man had
never talked so well before, that his mother would have been astonished
could she have beheld him. What had come to the young women of this
generation! Their grandmothers cared for politics only so far as they
advanced the fortunes of their lords--otherwise what was Hecuba to them,
or they to Hecuba? But these women have minds for the impersonal. Diana
was not talking to make an effect on Captain Roughsedge--that was the
strange part of it. Hundreds of women can make politics serve the
primitive woman's game; the "come hither in the ee" can use that weapon
as well as any other. But here was an intellectual, a patriotic
passion, veritable, genuine, not feigned.
Well!--the spectator admitted it--unwillingly--so long as the debater,
the orator, were still desirable, still lovely. She stole a glance at
Captain Roughsedge. Was he, too, so unconscious of sex, of opportunity?
Ah! _that_ she doubted! The young man played his part stoutly; flung
back the ball without a break; but there were glances, and movements and
expressions, which to this shrewd feminine eye appeared to betray what
no scrutiny could detect in Diana--a pleasure within a pleasure, and
thoughts behind thoughts.
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