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 Selina, winding up, "as soon as Reginald is of age
we shall get him into Parliament. Carr has always lamented that he
himself was not broken into office early; Reginald must be. Nothing so