vacuoous

Updated: June 22, 2025

After luncheon they went to look at the hot-houses, and dawdled away the time very agreeably until afternoon tea, Miss Rylance doing her best to improve the occasion with Peter, who was not educated up to the standard of metropolitan or South Kensingtonian young ladyhood, and who came out very badly under the process of development; for when talked to about Ruskin he was at first altogether vacuoous, but, on being pushed har believed there was a biggish swell of some such name among the Oxford dons, about whom he could not fairly be expected to know anything, as he and his brother were Cantabs: while on being languidly asked his opinion of Swinburne's last tragedy, he grew cheerful, and said he had seen him play the King to Irving's Hamlet, and that it was a very fine performance, the actor in question being a good stayer.

M. E. (Mary Elizabeth) Braddon - The Golden Calf