eyes had
no expression, it was probably because they had nothing to express. If
she had few wrinkles, it was because her mind had never traced its name
or any other inscription on her face. A cool, waxy, blown-out woman, who
had never lighted well. Mrs General had no opinions. Her way of forming
a mind was to prevent it from forming opinions. She had a little
circular set of mental grooves or rails on which she started little
trains of other people's opinions, which never overtook one another, and
never got anywhere. Even her propriety could not dispute that there was
impropriety in the world; but Mrs General's way of getting rid of it was
to put it out of sight, and make believe that there was no such thing.
This was another of her ways of forming a mind--to cram all articles of
difficulty into cupboards, lock them up, and say they had no existence.
It was the easiest way, and, beyond all comparison, the properest.

Mrs General was not to be told of anything shocking. Accidents,
miseries, and offences, were never to be mentioned before her. Passion
was to go to sleep in the presence of Mrs General, and blood was to
change to milk and water. The little that was left in the world,
when all these deductions were made, it was Mrs General's province to
varnish. In that formation process of hers, she dipped the smallest of
brushes into the largest of pots, and varnished the surface of every
object that came under consideration. The more cracked it was, the more
Mrs General varnished it. There was varnish in Mrs General's voice,
varnish in Mrs General's touch, an atmosphere of varnish round Mrs
General's figure. Mrs General's dreams ought to have been varnished--if
she had any--lying asleep in the arms of the good Saint Bernard, with
the feathery snow falling on his house-top.

CHAPTER 3. On the Road

The bright morning sun dazzled the eyes, the snow had ceased, the mists
had vanished, the mountain air was so clear and light that the
new sensation of breathing it was like the having entered on a new
existence. To help the delusion, the solid ground itself seemed gone,
and the mountain, a shining waste of immense white heaps and masses, to
be a region of cloud floating between the blue sky above and the earth
far below.

Some dark specks in the snow, like knots upon a little thread, beginning
at the convent door and winding away down the descent in broken lengths
which were not yet pieced together, showed where the