r you seem to detect,--it is
an exceeding sensitiveness of pride. I know not how else to describe it.
It is so interwoven with the highest qualities, that I sometimes dread
injury to them could it be torn away from the faultier ones which it
supports.

"It is interwoven with that lofty independence of spirit which has made
him refuse openings the most alluring to his ambition; it communicates a
touching grandeur to his self-denying thrift; it makes him so tenacious
of his word once given, so cautious before he gives it. Public life to
him is essential; without it he would be incomplete; and yet I sigh to
think that whatever success he may achieve in it will be attended with
proportionate pain. Calumny goes side by side with fame, and courting
fame as a man, he is as thin-skinned to calumny as a woman.

"The wife for Graham should have qualities, not taken individually,
uncommon in English wives, but in combination somewhat rare.

"She must have mind enough to appreciate his--not to clash with it.
She must be fitted with sympathies to be his dearest companion, his
confidante in the hopes and fears which the slightest want of sympathy
would make him keep ever afterwards pent within his breast. In herself
worthy of distinction, she must merge all distinction in his. You have
met in the world men who, marrying professed beauties, or professed
literary geniuses, are spoken of as the husband of the beautiful Mrs.
A------, or of the clever Mrs. B-------: can you fancy Graham Vane in
the reflected light of one of those husbands? I trembled last year when
I thought he was attracted by a face which the artists raved about, and
again by a tongue which dropped bons mots that went the round of the
club. I was relieved, when, sounding him, he said, laughingly, 'No, dear
aunt, I should be one sore from head to foot if I married a wife that
was talked about for anything but goodness.'

"No,--Graham Vane will have pains sharp enough if he live to be talked
about himself. But that tenderest half of himself, the bearer of the
name he would make, and for the dignity of which he alone would be
responsible,--if that were the town talk, he would curse the hour he
gave any one the right to take on herself his man's burden of calumny
and fame. I know not which I should pity the most, Graham Vane or his
wife.

"Do you understand me, dearest Eleanor? No doubt you do so far, that you
comprehend that the women whom men most admire are not the