mother-in-law, has been taking her about a great deal
latterly.'

'She has apparently a very good prospect.'

'Yes; and it is through her being of that curious undefined character
which interprets itself to each admirer as whatever he would like to have
it. Old men like her because she is so girlish; youths because she is
womanly; wicked men because she is good in their eyes; good men because
she is wicked in theirs.'

'She must be a very anomalous sort of woman, at that rate.'

'Yes. Like the British Constitution, she owes her success in practice to
her inconsistencies in principle.'

'These poems must have set her up. She appears to be quite the correct
spectacle. Happy Mrs. Petherwin!'

The subject of their dialogue was engaged in a conversation with Mrs.
Belmaine upon the management of households--a theme provoked by a
discussion that was in progress in the pages of some periodical of the
time. Mrs. Belmaine was very full of the argument, and went on from
point to point till she came to servants.

The face of Ethelberta showed caution at once.

'I consider that Lady Plamby pets her servants by far too much,' said
Mrs. Belmaine. 'O, you do not know her? Well, she is a woman with
theories; and she lends her maids and men books of the wrong kind for
their station, and sends them to picture exhibitions which they don't in
the least understand--all for the improvement of their taste, and morals,
and nobody knows what besides. It only makes them dissatisfied.'

The face of Ethelberta showed venturesomeness. 'Yes, and dreadfully
ambitious!' she said.

'Yes, indeed. What a turn the times have taken! People of that sort
push on, and get into business, and get great warehouses, until at last,
without ancestors, or family, or name, or estate--'

'Or the merest scrap of heirloom or family jewel.'

'Or heirlooms, or family jewels, they are thought as much of as if their
forefathers had glided unobtrusively through the peerage--'

'Ever since the first edition.'

'Yes.' Mrs. Belmaine, who really sprang from a good old family, had been
going to say, 'for the last seven hundred years,' but fancying from
Ethelberta's addendum that she might not date back more than a trifling
century or so, adopted the suggestion with her usual well-known courtesy,
and blushed down to her locket at the thought of the mistake that she
might have made. This sensitiveness was a trait in her character which
gave great grati