ot comprehend, and
he had grown so accustomed, after an effort to master a difficulty,
to lean his head back upon downy ignorance, that he treated this
significant letter of Edward's like a tough lesson, and quietly put it
by, together with every recommendation it contained. For all that was
practical in it, it might just as well not have been written.

The value of the letter lies in the exhibition it presents of a rather
mark-worthy young man, who has passed through the hands of a--(what I
must call her; and in doing so, I ask pardon of all the Jack Cades of
Letters, who, in the absence of a grammatical king and a government,
sit as lords upon the English tongue) a crucible woman. She may be
inexcusable herself; but you for you to be base, for you to be cowardly,
even to betray a weakness, though it be on her behalf,--though you can
plead that all you have done is for her, yea, was partly instigated by
her,--it will cause her to dismiss you with the inexorable contempt of
Nature, when she has tried one of her creatures and found him wanting.

Margaret Lovell was of this description: a woman fashioned to do both
harm and good, and more of harm than of good; but never to sanction
a scheme of evil or blink at it in alliance with another: a woman, in
contact with whom you were soon resolved to your component elements.
Separated from a certain fascination that there was for her in Edward's
acerb wit, she saw that he was doing a dastardly thing in cold blood. We
need not examine their correspondence. In a few weeks she had contrived
to put a chasm between them as lovers. Had he remained in England,
boldly facing his own evil actions, she would have been subjugated, for
however keenly she might pierce to the true character of a man, the show
of an unflinching courage dominated her; but his departure, leaving all
the brutality to be done for him behind his back, filled this woman with
a cutting spleen. It is sufficient for some men to know that they are
seen through, in order to turn away in loathing from her whom they have
desired; and when they do thus turn away, they not uncommonly turn with
a rush of old affection to those who have generously trusted them in the
days past, and blindly thought them estimable beings.

Algernon was by no means gifted to perceive whether this was the case
with his cousin in Paris.

CHAPTER XXIX

So long as the fool has his being in the world, he will be a part of
every history, nor