, and laughed and feasted with jolly prodigals and
their company. He was tired of it: perhaps he remembered an earlier
and purer life, and was sighing to return to it. Living as he had done
amongst the outcasts, his ideal of domestic virtue was high and pure. He
chose to believe that good women were entirely good. Duplicity he could
not understand; ill-temper shocked him: wilfulness he seemed to fancy
belonged only to the profane and wicked; not to good girls, with good
mothers, in honest homes. Their nature was to love their families; to
obey their parents; to tend their poor; to honour their husbands; to
cherish their children. Ethel's laugh woke him up from one of these
simple reveries very likely, and then she swept round the ballroom
rapidly, to the brazen notes of the orchestra. He never offered to dance
with her more than once in the evening; went away to play, and returned
to find her still whirling to the music. Madame d'Ivry remarked
his tribulation and gloomy face, though she took no pleasure at his
discomfiture, knowing that Ethel's behaviour caused it.

In plays and novels, and I dare say in real life too sometimes, when the
wanton heroine chooses to exert her powers of fascination, and to flirt
with Sir Harry or the Captain, the hero, in a pique, goes off and makes
love to somebody else: both acknowledge their folly after a while, shake
hands, and are reconciled, and the curtain drops, or the volume ends.
But there are some people too noble and simple for these amorous scenes
and smirking artifices. When Kew was pleased he laughed, when he was
grieved he was silent. He did not deign to hide his grief or pleasure
under disguises. His error, perhaps, was in forgetting that Ethel was
very young; that her conduct was not design so much as girlish mischief
and high spirits; and that if young men have their frolics, sow their
wild oats, and enjoy their pleasure, young women may be permitted
sometimes their more harmless vagaries of gaiety, and sportive outbreaks
of wilful humour.

When she consented to go home at length, Lord Kew brought Miss Newcome's
little white cloak for her (under the hood of which her glossy curls,
her blushing cheeks, and bright eyes looked provokingly handsome), and
encased her in this pretty garment without uttering one single word.
She made him a saucy curtsey in return for this act of politeness, which
salutation he received with a grave bow; and then he proceeded to cover
up old Lad