certain measure of insight that might have helped her to fathom him, if
only she could have kept her feelings down.

The old lady was affectionately confidential in talking of her one
subject, her son. "And here is another dashing girl, my dear; she has
money and health and beauty; and so has he; and it appears a fortunate
union; I hope and pray it may be; but we begin to read the world when
our eyes grow dim, because we read the plain lines, and I ask myself
whether money and health and beauty on both sides have not been the
mutual attraction. We tried it before; and that girl Durham was honest,
whatever we may call her. I should have desired an appreciative
thoughtful partner for him, a woman of mind, with another sort of
wealth and beauty. She was honest, she ran away in time; there was a
worse thing possible than that. And now we have the same chapter, and
the same kind of person, who may not be quite as honest; and I shall
not see the end of it. Promise me you will always be good to him; be
my son's friend; his Egeria, he names you. Be what you were to him when
that girl broke his heart, and no one, not even his mother, was allowed
to see that he suffered anything. Comfort him in his sensitiveness.
Willoughby has the most entire faith in you. Were that destroyed--I
shudder! You are, he says, and he has often said, his image of the
constant woman."

Laetitia's hearing took in no more. She repeated to herself for days:
"His image of the constant woman!" Now, when he was a second time
forsaking her, his praise of her constancy wore the painful
ludicrousness of the look of a whimper on the face.