ng her temper.

"Is that gracieusete for me? How much goodness! This good Monsieur de
Blackball is not very well bred; but, for an Englishman, he is not too
bad. I have met with people who are more ill-bred than Englishmen in my
travels."

"And they are?" said Lady Anne, who had been in vain endeavouring to put
an end to this colloquy.

"Englishwomen, madam! I speak not for you. You are kind; you--you are
too soft, dear Lady Anne, for a persecutor."

The counsels of the worldly woman who governed and directed that branch
of the Newcome family of whom it is our business to speak now for a
little while, bore other results than those which the elderly lady
desired and foresaw. Who can foresee everything and always? Not the
wisest among us. When his Majesty Louis XIV., jockeyed his grandson on
to the throne of Spain (founding thereby the present revered dynasty
of that country), did he expect to peril his own, and bring all Europe
about his royal ears? Could a late King of France, eager for the
advantageous establishment of one of his darling sons, and anxious
to procure a beautiful Spanish princess, with a crown and kingdom in
reversion, for the simple and obedient youth, ever suppose that the
welfare of his whole august race and reign would be upset by that smart
speculation? We take only the most noble examples to illustrate the
conduct of such a noble old personage as her ladyship of Kew, who
brought a prodigious deal of trouble upon some of the innocent members
of her family, whom no doubt she thought to better in life by her
experienced guidance and undoubted worldly wisdom. We may be as deep as
Jesuits, know the world ever so well, lay the best-ordered plans, and
the profoundest combinations, and by a certain not unnatural turn of
fate, we, and our plans and combinations, are sent flying before the
wind. We may be as wise as Louis Philippe, that many-counselled Ulysses
whom the respectable world admired so; and after years of patient
scheming, and prodigies of skill, after coaxing, wheedling, doubling,
bullying, wisdom, behold yet stronger powers interpose: and schemes, and
skill and violence, are nought.

Frank and Ethel, Lady Kew's grandchildren, were both the obedient
subjects of this ancient despot: this imperious old Louis XIV. in a
black front and a cap and ribbon, this scheming old Louis Philippe in
tabinet; but their blood was good and their tempers high; and for all
her bitting and driving, and the tra