to the false metal. And I doubt whether the cleverest she in the
world can make false enthusiasm palatable to the taste of man. To
the taste of any woman the enthusiasm of another woman is never very
palatable.

We understood at Home that Mrs. Talboys had a considerable family,--
four or five children, we were told; but she brought with her only
one daughter, a little girl about twelve years of age. She had torn
herself asunder, as she told me, from the younger nurslings of her
heart, and had left them to the care of a devoted female attendant,
whose love was all but maternal. And then she said a word or two
about the General, in terms which made me almost think that this
quasi-maternal love extended itself beyond the children. The idea,
however, was a mistaken one, arising from the strength of her
language, to which I was then unaccustomed. I have since become
aware that nothing can be more decorous than old Mrs. Upton, the
excellent head-nurse at Hardover Lodge; and no gentleman more
discreet in his conduct than General Talboys.

And I may as well here declare, also, that there could be no more
virtuous woman than the General's wife. Her marriage vow was to her
paramount to all other vows and bonds whatever. The General's
honour was quite safe when he sent her off to Rome by herself; and
he no doubt knew that it was so. Illi robur et aes triplex, of
which I believe no weapons of any assailant could get the better.
But, nevertheless, we used to fancy that she had no repugnance to
impropriety in other women,--to what the world generally calls
impropriety. Invincibly attached herself to the marriage tie, she
would constantly speak of it as by no means necessarily binding on
others; and, virtuous herself as any griffin of propriety, she