Page:Female Portrait Gallery.pdf/49

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JENNY DENNISON.
125

he returned as many return, who left their country with far higher hopes than Henry Morton—changed, subdued, and grey at heart before their time.

But we are keeping Jenny Dennison waiting—a fault she would not have pardoned in any one of her followers at trysting time. In this pearl of soubrettes Scott has most ingeniously blended the general cast of her kind, and the peculiar cast of her country. She has a natural gift of coquetry, which is as much a talent as a taste for music, drawing, or any other female accomplishment; she not only, like Will Honeycombe, "laughs easily," (a most popular facility), but what is of infinitely more consequence to a woman, cries easily too. Her coquetry is also combined with calculation—she never forgets that though there is certainly no hurry in the matter, one or other of these lovers is some day to be her husband; and to do Jenny Dennison justice, she does not seem very particular which, though there is a sort of a preference for Cuddie. But the lovers of her mistress are of more importance to her than her own, and not so easily managed. She pities Morton, but her preference is for Lord Evandale. The dialogue between her and Cuddie, when she protests against any recognition of the former, as likely to militate against the interests of the latter with Edith, is a most exquisite piece of conjugal diplomacy. I remember pay-