g. Lizzie Eustace
was utterly powerless to impose upon her. Such as Lizzie was, Miss
Macnulty was willing to put up with her and accept her bread. The
people whom she had known had been either worthless,--as had been
her own father, or cruel,--like Lady Linlithgow, or false,--as was
Lady Eustace. Miss Macnulty knew that worthlessness, cruelty, and
falseness had to be endured by such as she. And she could bear them
without caring much about them;--not condemning them, even within
her own heart, very heavily. But she was strangely deficient in
this,--that she could not call these qualities by other names, even
to the owners of them. She was unable to pretend to believe Lizzie's
rhapsodies. It was hardly conscience or a grand spirit of truth that
actuated her, as much as a want of the courage needed for lying. She
had not had the face to call old Lady Linlithgow kind, and therefore
old Lady Linlithgow had turned her out of the house. When Lady
Eustace called on her for sympathy, she had not courage enough to
dare to attempt the bit of acting which would be necessary for
sympathetic expression. She was like a dog or a child, and was unable
not to be true. Lizzie was longing for a little mock sympathy,--was
longing to show off her Shelley, and was very kind to Miss Macnulty
when she got the poor lady into the recess of the window. "This is
nice;--is it not?" she said, as she spread her hand out through the
open space towards the "wide expanse of glittering waves."

"Very nice,--only it glares so," said Miss Macnulty.

"Ah, I love the full warmth of the real summer. With me it always
seems that the sun is needed to bring to true ripeness the fruit of
the heart." Nevertheless she had been much troubled both by the heat
and by the midges when she tried to sit on the stone. "I always think
of those few glorious days which I passed with my darling Florian
at Naples;--days too glorious because they were so few." Now Miss
Macnulty knew some of the history of those days and of their
glory,--and knew also how the widow had borne her loss.

"I suppose the bay of Naples is fine," she said.

"It is not only the bay. There are scenes there which ravish you,
only it is necessary that there should be some one with you that can
understand you. 'Soul of Ianthe!'" she said, meaning to apostrophise
that of the deceased Sir Florian. "You have read 'Queen Mab'?"

"I don't know that I ever did. If I have, I have forgotten it."

"Ah,--you s