al, and asked
how it sounded, a score of times. I said very little. I gave her only
the crust and rind of my nature. No matter she expected of me nothing
better--she knew me too well to look for compliments--my dry gibes
pleased her well enough and the more impassible and prosaic my mien,
the more merrily she laughed.

Soon after his marriage, M. de Hamal was persuaded to leave the army as
the surest way of weaning him from certain unprofitable associates and
habits; a post of attache was procured for him, and he and his young
wife went abroad. I thought she would forget me now, but she did not.
For many years, she kept up a capricious, fitful sort of
correspondence. During the first year or two, it was only of herself
and Alfred she wrote; then, Alfred faded in the background; herself and
a certain, new comer prevailed; one Alfred Fanshawe de Bassompierre de
Hamal began to reign in his father's stead. There were great boastings
about this personage, extravagant amplifications upon miracles of
precocity, mixed with vehement objurgations against the phlegmatic
incredulity with which I received them. I didn't know "what it was to
be a mother;" "unfeeling thing that I was, the sensibilities of the
maternal heart were Greek and Hebrew to me," and so on. In due course
of nature this young gentleman took his degrees in teething, measles,
hooping-cough: that was a terrible time for me--the mamma's letters
became a perfect shout of affliction; never woman was so put upon by
calamity: never human being stood in such need of sympathy. I was
frightened at first, and wrote back pathetically; but I soon found out
there was more cry than wool in the business, and relapsed into my
natural cruel insensibility. As to the youthful sufferer, he weathered
each storm like a hero. Five times was that youth "in articulo mortis,"
and five times did he miraculously revive.

In the course of years there arose ominous murmurings against Alfred
the First; M. de Bassompierre had to be appealed to, debts had to be
paid, some of them of that dismal and dingy order called "debts of
honour;" ignoble plaints and difficulties became frequent. Under every
cloud, no matter what its nature, Ginevra, as of old, called out
lustily for sympathy and aid. She had no notion of meeting any distress
single-handed. In some shape, from some quarter or other, she was
pretty sure to obtain her will, and so she got on--fighting the battle
of life by proxy, and, on the