nt, and extended, in self-defence, to persons, was adopted as a
habit, and infused itself over affairs in general.

Mrs. Coningsby was the fashion; she was a wit as well as a beauty; a
fascinating droll; dazzling and bewitching, the idol of every youth.
Eugene de Vere was roused from his premature exhaustion, and at last
found excitement again. He threw himself at her feet; she laughed at
him. He asked leave to follow her footsteps; she consented. He was
only one of a band of slaves. Lord Beaumanoir, still a bachelor, always
hovered about her, feeding on her laughing words with a mild melancholy,
and sometimes bandying repartee with a kind of tender and stately
despair. His sister, Lady Theresa Lyle, was Edith's great friend. Their
dispositions had some resemblance. Marriage had developed in both
of them a frolic grace. They hunted in couple; and their sport was
brilliant. Many things may be said by a strong female alliance, that
would assume quite a different character were they even to fall from the
lips of an Aspasia to a circle of male votaries; so much depends upon
the scene and the characters, the mode and the manner.

The good-natured world would sometimes pause in its amusement, and,
after dwelling with statistical accuracy on the number of times Mrs.
Coningsby had danced the polka, on the extraordinary things she said to
Lord Eugene de Vere, and the odd things she and Lady Theresa Lyle were
perpetually doing, would wonder, with a face and voice of innocence,
'how Mr. Coningsby liked all this?' There is no doubt what was the
anticipation by the good-natured world of Mr. Coningsby's feelings. But
they were quite mistaken. There was nothing that Mr. Coningsby liked
more. He wished his wife to become a social power; and he wished his
wife to be amused. He saw that, with the surface of a life of levity,
she already exercised considerable influence, especially over the young;
and independently of such circumstances and considerations, he was
delighted to have a wife who was not afraid of going into society by
herself; not one whom he was sure to find at home when he returned
from the House of Commons, not reproaching him exactly for her social
sacrifices, but looking a victim, and thinking that she retained her
husband's heart by being a mope. Instead of that Con-ingsby wanted to be
amused when he came home, and more than that, he wanted to be instructed
in the finest learning in the world.

As some men keep up the