other traits in Lizzie's
character,--traits which he had seen, and which were not of a nature
to attract,--it must be remembered that beauty reclining in a man's
arms does go far towards washing white the lovely blackamoor. Lady
Linlithgow, upon whom Lizzie's beauty could have no effect of that
kind, had nevertheless declared her to be very beautiful. And this
loveliness was of a nature that was altogether pleasing, if once the
beholder of it could get over the idea of falseness which certainly
Lizzie's eye was apt to convey to the beholder. There was no unclean
horse's tail. There was no get-up of flounces, and padding, and
paint, and hair, with a dorsal excrescence appended with the object
surely of showing in triumph how much absurd ugliness women can force
men to endure. She was lithe, and active, and bright,--and was at
this moment of her life at her best. Her growing charms had as yet
hardly reached the limits of full feminine loveliness,--which, when
reached, have been surpassed. Luxuriant beauty had with her not as
yet become comeliness; nor had age or the good things of the world
added a pound to the fairy lightness of her footstep. All this had
been tendered to Frank,--and with it that worldly wealth which was
so absolutely necessary to his career. For though Greystock would
not have said to any man or woman that nature had intended him to
be a spender of much money and a consumer of many good things, he
did undoubtedly so think of himself. He was a Greystock, and to
what miseries would he not reduce his Lucy if, burthened by such
propensities, he were to marry her and then become an aristocratic
pauper!

The offer of herself by a woman to a man is, to us all, a thing
so distasteful that we at once declare that the woman must be
abominable. There shall be no whitewashing of Lizzie Eustace. She
was abominable. But the man to whom the offer is made hardly sees
the thing in the same light. He is disposed to believe that, in his
peculiar case, there are circumstances by which the woman is, if not
justified, at least excused. Frank did put faith in his cousin's
love for himself. He did credit her when she told him that she had
accepted Lord Fawn's offer in pique, because he had not come to her
when he had promised that he would come. It did seem natural to him
that she should have desired to adhere to her engagement when he
would not advise her to depart from it. And then her jealousy about
Lucy's ring, and her a