e to Palmet
than to me. He wrote a description of Madame de Rouaillout that set
Palmet strutting about for an hour. I have no doubt she must be a very
beautiful woman, for a Frenchwoman: not regular features; expressive,
capricious. Vivian Ducie lays great stress on her eyes and eyebrows, and,
I think, her hair. With a Frenchwoman's figure, that is enough to make
men crazy. He says her husband deserves--but what will not young men
write? It is deeply to be regretted that Englishmen abroad--women the
same, I fear--get the Continental tone in morals. But how Captain
Beauchamp could expect to carry on an Election and an intrigue together,
only a head like his can tell us. Grancey is in high indignation with
him. It does not concern the Election, you can imagine. Something that
man Dr. Shrapnel has done, which he says Captain Beauchamp could have
prevented. Quarrels of men! I have instructed Palmet to write to Vivian
Ducie for a photograph of Madame de Rouaillout. Do you know, one has a
curiosity to see the face of the woman for whom a man ruins himself. But
I say again, he ought to be married.'

'That there may be two victims?' Cecilia said it smiling.

She was young in suffering, and thought, as the unseasoned and
inexperienced do, that a mask is a concealment.

'Married--settled; to have him bound in honour,' said Mrs. Lespel. 'I had
a conversation with him when he was at Itchincope; and his look, and what
I know of his father, that gallant and handsome Colonel Richard
Beauchamp, would give one a kind of confidence in him; supposing always
that he is not struck with one of those deadly passions that are like
snakes, like magic. I positively believe in them. I have seen them. And
if they end, they end as if the man were burnt out, and was ashes inside;
as you see Mr. Stukely Culbrett, all cynicism. You would not now suspect
him of a passion! It is true. Oh, I know it! That is what the men go to.
The women die. Vera Winter died at twenty-three. Caroline Ormond was
hardly older. You know her story; everybody knows it. The most singular
and convincing case was that of Lord Alfred Burnley and Lady Susan
Gardiner, wife of the general; and there was an instance of two similarly
afflicted--a very rare case, most rare: they never could meet to part! It
was almost ludicrous. It is now quite certain that they did not conspire
to meet. At last the absolute fatality became so well understood by the
persons immediately interested--Y