ctions, very! Carr says we have not a more
useful,--but third-rate, my dear. All the Crookes are bad wives, because
they are never satisfied with their own homes, but are always trying
to get into great people's homes. Not very long before she died, Mrs.
Darrell took her friend and relation, Mrs. Lyndsay, to live with her. I
suspect it was not from affection, or any great consideration for Mrs.
Lyndsay's circumstances (which were indeed those of actual destitution,
till--thanks to Mr. Darrell--she won her lawsuit), but simply because
she looked to Mrs. Lyndsay to get her into our set. Mrs. Lyndsay was a
great favourite with all of us, charming manners,--perfectly correct,
too,--thorough Vipont, thorough gentlewoman, but artful! Oh, so artful!
She humoured poor Mrs. Darrell's absurd vanity; but she took care not to
injure herself. Of course, Darrell's wife, and a Vipont--though only a
Vipont Crooke--had free passport into the outskirts of good society, the
great parties, and so forth. But there it stopped; even I should have
been compromised if I had admitted into our set a woman who was bent
on compromising herself. Handsome, in a bad style, not the Vipont
_tournure_; and not only silly and flirting, but (we are alone, keep the
secret) decidedly vulgar, my dear."

"You amaze me! How such a man--" Honoria stopped, colouring up to the
temples.

"Clever men," said Lady Selina, "as a general rule, do choose the oddest
wives! The cleverer a man is, the more easily, I do believe, a woman can
take him in. However, to do Mr. Darrell justice, he has been taken in
only once. After Mrs. Darrell's death, Mrs. Lyndsay, I suspect, tried
her chance, but failed. Of course, she would not actually stay in the
same house with a widower who was then young, and who had only to get
rid of a wife to whom one was forced to be shy in order to be received
into our set with open arms, and, in short, to be of the very best
monde. Mr. Darrell came into Parliament immensely rich (a legacy from an
old East Indian, besides his own professional savings); took the house
he has now, close by us. Mrs. Lyndsay was obliged to retire to a cottage
at Fulham. But as she professed to be a second mother to poor Matilda
Darrell, she contrived to be very much at Carlton Gardens; her daughter
Caroline was nearly always there, profiting by Matilda's masters; and
I did think that Mrs. Lyndsay would have caught Darrell, but your papa
said 'No,' and he was right, as h