attered by
life; and Lady Caroline had been very thoroughly battered indeed: a
bad husband--a bad son, her only child! both dead, but deeply loved
and lamented; and in her heart of hearts there lurked a sad suspicion
that her piety (so deep and earnest and sincere) had not bettered
their badness--on the contrary, perhaps! and had driven her Barty
from her when he needed her most.

Now that his need of her was so great, greater than it had ever been
before, she would take good care that no piety of hers should ever
drive him away from her again; she felt almost penitent and
apologetic for having done what she had known to be right--the woman
in her had at last outgrown the nun.

She almost began to doubt whether she had not been led to selfishly
overrate the paramount importance of the exclusive salvation of her
own particular soul!

And then his frank, fresh look and manner, and honest boyish voice,
so unmistakably sincere, and that mild and magnificent eye, so
bright and humorous still, "so like--so like!" which couldn't even
see her loving, anxious face.... Thank Heaven, there was still one
eye left that she could appeal to with both her own!

And what a child he had been, poor dear--the very pearl of the Rohans!
What Rohan of them all was ever a patch on this poor bastard of
Antoinette Josselin's, either for beauty, pluck, or mother-wit--or even
for honor, if it came to that? Why, a quixotic scruple of honor had
ruined him, and she was Rohan enough to understand what the temptation
had been the other way: she had seen the beautiful bad lady!

And, pure as her own life had been, she was no puritan, but of a
church well versed in the deepest knowledge of our poor weak frail
humanity; she has told me all about it, and I listened between the
words.

So during the remainder of her stay at Blankenberghe he was very
much with Lady Caroline, and rediscovered what a pleasant and lively
companion she could be--especially at meals (she was fond of good
food of a plain and wholesome kind, and took good care to get it).

She had her little narrownesses, to be sure, and was not
hail-fellow-well-met with everybody, like him; and did not think
very much of giddy little viscountesses with straddling loud-voiced
Flemish husbands, nor of familiar facetious commercial millionaires,
of whom Barty numbered two or three among his adorers; nor even of
the "highly born" Irish wives of Belgian generals and all that.
Madame de Cleves