hew comes here to-morrow," said she, "my old play-fellow;
impossible quite to forget old friends; good night."

CHAPTER IX.

"Les extremes se touchent."

The next day the gentlemen were dispersed out of doors, a large shooting
party. Those who did not shoot, walked forth to inspect the racing stud
or the model farm. The ladies had taken their walk; some were in
their own rooms, some in the reception-rooms, at work, or reading, or
listening to the piano,--Honoria Carr Vipont again performing. Lady
Montfort was absent; Lady Selina kindly supplied the hostess's place.
Lady Selina was embroidering, with great skill and taste, a pair of
slippers for her eldest boy, who was just entered at Oxford, having left
Eton with a reputation of being the neatest dresser, and not the worst
cricketer, of that renowned educational institute. It is a mistake
to suppose that fine ladies are not sometimes very fond mothers and
affectionate wives. Lady Selina, beyond her family circle, was trivial,
unsympathizing, cold-hearted, supercilious by temperament, never kind
but through policy, artificial as clock work. But in her own home,
to her husband, her children, Lady Selina was a very good sort of
woman,--devotedly attached to Carr Vipont, exaggerating his talents,
thinking him the first man in England, careful of his honour, zealous
for his interest, soothing in his cares, tender in his ailments; to
her girls prudent and watchful, to her boys indulgent and caressing;
minutely attentive to the education of the first, according to her
high-bred ideas of education,--and they really were "superior" girls,
with much instruction and well-balanced minds,--less authoritative with
the last, because boys being not under her immediate control, her sense
of responsibility allowed her to display more fondness and less dignity
in her intercourse with them than with young ladies who must learn
from her example, as well as her precepts, the patrician decorum which
becomes the smooth result of impulse restrained and emotion checked:
boys might make a noise in the world, girls should make none. Lady
Selina, then, was working the slippers for her absent son, her heart
being full of him at that moment. She was describing his character and
expatiating on his promise to two or three attentive listeners, all
interested, as being themselves of the Vipont blood, in the probable
destiny of the heir to the Carr Viponts.

"In short," said Lady Sel