es on them, but never satiety or coldness. To the very last he
worshiped her, and, to the utmost of his power, guarded her tenderly.
Rough, and hard, and morose as he was to others, she never heard his
lips utter one harsh word.

But she was of a proud, sensitive spirit, and had miscalculated her
strength when she thought she could bear dishonor. After that duel with
which Austria rang, in which the best _schlager_ in his brigade fell,
horribly mangled, the day after he had whispered a jest about Caroline
Mannering, men were very cautious how they even looked askance at her;
but the women--who could bridle their tongues or blunt their scornful
glances? Briareus, armed to the teeth, would not affright our modern
dowagers, or deter them from their prey. Wherever the carcass of a fair
fame lies, thither they flock, screaming shrilly in triumph,
vulture-eyed, sharp-taloned--the choosers of the slain.

I pity from my heart the frailest, the most utterly fallen of her sex,
when once the social Nemesis hands her over to the chorus of the
Eumenides.

We deride the _subsignanae_ who line the wall; we make a mock at their
old-fashioned whist; we risk jokes whereat our partners smile
approvingly on their false fronts and wonderful head-gears; but may the
wittiest of us never know by experience how much worse is the bite than
the bark of the Veteran Battalion!

Caroline Mannering had all this to contend with, for Vienna was a
favorite resort in those days for the English, and she was constantly
encountering some of her old set. She bore up bravely for a while, but
it killed her. She never wearied her lover with her self-reproach, but
crushed back her sorrows into her heart, and met him always with a
gentle smile. That same smile contrasted so sadly, at last, with the
wan, worn features, that it often made him bend his bushy brows to
conceal the rising tears.

If her destiny had been different--if she had died ripe in years, after
a life spent in calm matronly happiness, with all that she loved best
round her, would she have been nursed so tenderly or mourned so bitterly
by the nearest and dearest of them all as she was by her tempter to sin?
I think not. I believe that in all the world there never was a greater
sorrow than that which Mohun endured as he saw his treasure slowly
escaping him; never a desolation more complete and crushing than that
which fell upon him as he stood by her corpse, with dry eyes, folded
arms, and a