read in all the doings of her life. But
she had endeavoured to make it understood by her children that they
should not be over-quick to claim the privileges of rank. Too many
such would be showered on them,--too many for their own welfare.
Let them never be greedy to take with outstretched hands those good
things of which Chance had provided for them so much more than their
fair share. Let them remember that after all there was no virtue in
having been born a child to a Marquis. Let them remember how much
more it was to be a useful man, or a kind woman. So the lessons had
been given,--and had gone for more than had been intended. Then all
the renown of their father's old politics assisted,--the re-election
of the drunken tailor,--the jeerings of friends who were high enough
and near enough to dare to jeer,--the convictions of childhood
that it was a fine thing, because peculiar for a Marquis and his
belongings, to be Radical;--and, added to this, there was contempt
for the specially noble graces of their stepmother. Thus it was that
Lord Hampstead was brought to his present condition of thinking,--and
Lady Frances.

Her convictions were quite as strong as his, though they did
not assume the same form. With a girl, at an early age, all her
outlookings into the world have something to do with love and its
consequences. When a young man takes his leaning either towards
Liberalism or Conservatism he is not at all actuated by any feeling
as to how some possible future young woman may think on the subject.
But the girl, if she entertains such ideas at all, dreams of them as
befitting the man whom she may some day hope to love. Should she, a
Protestant, become a Roman Catholic and then a nun, she feels that
in giving up her hope for a man's love she is making the greatest
sacrifice in her power for the Saviour she is taking to her heart.
If she devotes herself to music, or the pencil, or to languages,
the effect which her accomplishments may have on some beau ideal
of manhood is present to her mind. From the very first she is
dressing herself unconsciously in the mirror of a man's eyes. Quite
unconsciously, all this had been present to Lady Frances as month
after month and year after year she had formed her strong opinions.
She had thought of no man's love,--had thought but little of loving
any man,--but in her meditations as to the weaknesses and vanity of
rank there had always been present that idea,--how would it be with