If among the points of a well-nurtured woman there be those that are feline, they are generally retracted into velvet sheaths, and scarce surmised to be there till a scratch is made so silently that you have no evidence of it but your blood. But if Old Probabilities should overhear a woman blustering in a fashion as follows,—
"Though in this place most master wear no breeches,
She shall not strike Dame Eleanor unreveng'd,"—
he would at once order cautionary signals. When a man scolds in the pulpit or a woman on the platform, the planets shudder, shrink, and grow more crusty.
Bassanio had caught a throb from the soft breath of Portia which seemed to be a herald of the beauty he describes afterwards when the lucky lid is lifted,—
"Here in her hairs
The painter plays the spider, and hath woven
A golden mesh t' entrap the hearts of men,
Faster than gnats in cobwebs; but her eyes!
How could he see to do them? Having made one,
Methinks, it should have power to steal both his,
And leave itself unfurnish'd."
She knows that this portrait of herself lies in the leaden casket; so that whenever a suitor comes to speculate upon the chance of finding it, how that sweet breath must break into flurries of dread which call into the eyes a distant alarm! For, before her father died, she had seen Bassanio, and secretly preferred him; and we hear him tell Antonio in confidence that
"Sometimes from her eyes
I did receive fair speechless messages."
