d a constant thought; she was always
like unto herself; she did not halve her soul to suit two atmospheres,
one ardent, the other icy. In short, Madame de Mortsauf reserved her
mind and the flower of her thought to express her feelings; she was
coquettish in ideas with her children and with me. But Arabella's mind
was never used to make life pleasant; it was never used at all for my
benefit; it existed only for the world and by the world, and it was
spent in sarcasm. She loved to rend, to bite, as it were,--not for
amusement but to satisfy a craving. Madame de Mortsauf would have hidden
her happiness from every eye, Lady Dudley chose to exhibit hers to
all Paris; and yet with her impenetrable English mask she kept within
conventions even while parading in the Bois with me. This mixture of
ostentation and dignity, love and coldness, wounded me constantly; for
my soul was both virgin and passionate, and as I could not pass from one
temperature to the other, my temper suffered. When I complained (never
without precaution), she turned her tongue with its triple sting against
me; mingling boasts of her love with those cutting English sarcasms. As
soon as she found herself in opposition to me, she made it an amusement
to hurt my feelings and humiliate my mind; she kneaded me like dough. To
any remark of mine as to keeping a medium in all things, she replied by
caricaturing my ideas and exaggerating them. When I reproached her for
her manner to me, she asked if I wished her to kiss me at the opera
before all Paris; and she said it so seriously that I, knowing her
desire to make people talk, trembled lest she should execute her threat.
In spite of her real passion she was never meditative, self-contained,
or reverent, like Henriette; on the contrary she was insatiable as a
sandy soil. Madame de Mortsauf was always composed, able to feel my soul
in an accent or a glance. Lady Dudley was never affected by a look, or
a pressure of the hand, nor yet by a tender word. No proof of love
surprised her. She felt so strong a necessity for excitement, noise,
celebrity, that nothing attained to her ideal in this respect; hence her
violent love, her exaggerated fancy,--everything concerned herself and
not me.

The letter you have read from Madame de Mortsauf (a light which still
shone brightly on my life), a proof of how the most virtuous of women
obeyed the genius of a Frenchwoman, revealing, as it did, her perpetual
vigilance, her sound u