nd time, a feeble, pretty, pink-and-white little
woman, who had been his daughter's governess; married her without rhyme
or reason, as all his friends and connections said. The only feasible
motive for this second union seemed to be a desire on Mr. Copperhead's
part to have something belonging to him which he could always jeer at,
and in this way the match was highly successful. Mrs. Copperhead the
second was gushing and susceptible, and as good a butt as could be
imagined. She kept him in practice when nobody else was at hand. She was
one of those naturally refined but less than half-educated, timid
creatures who are to be found now and then painfully earning the bread
which is very bitter to them in richer people's houses, and preserving
in their little silent souls some fetish in the shape of a scrap of
gentility, which is their sole comfort, or almost their sole comfort.
Mrs. Copperhead's fetish was the dear recollection that she was "an
officer's daughter;" or rather this had been her fetish in the days when
she had nothing, and was free to plume herself on the reflected glory.
Whether in the depths of her luxurious abode, at the height of her good
fortune, she still found comfort in the thought, it would be hard to
tell. Everybody who had known her in her youth thought her the most
fortunate of women. Her old school companions told her story for the
encouragement of their daughters, as they might have told a fairy tale.
To see her rolling in her gorgeous carriage, or bowed out of a shop
where all the daintiest devices of fashion had been placed at her feet,
filled passers-by with awe and envy. She could buy whatever she liked,
festoon herself with finery, surround herself with the costliest
knick-knacks; the more there were of them, and the costlier they were,
the better was Mr. Copperhead pleased. She had everything that heart
could desire. Poor little woman! What a change from the
governess-chrysalis who was snubbed by her pupil and neglected by
everybody! and yet I am not sure that she did not--so inconsistent is
human nature--look back to those melancholy days with a sigh.

This lady was the mother of Clarence Copperhead, the young man who was
at Oxford, her only child, upon whom (of course) she doted with the
fondest folly; and whom his father jeered at more than at any one else
in the world, more even than at his mother, yet was prouder of than of
all his other sons and all his possessions put together. Clare