Crookes are just one of those connections with which, though of course
one is civil to all connections, one is more or less intimate according
as they take after the Viponts or after the Crookes. Poor woman! she
died just before Mr. Darrell entered Parliament and appeared in society.
But I should say she was not an agreeable person. Not nice," added Lady
Selina, after a pause, and conveying a world of meaning in that
conventional monosyllable.

"I suppose she was very accomplished, very clever?"

"Quite the reverse, my dear. Mr. Darrell was exceedingly young when he
married, scarcely of age. She was not the sort of woman to suit him."

"But at least she must have been very much attached to him, very proud of
him?"

Lady Selina glanced aside from her work, and observed her daughter's
face, which evinced an animation not usual to a young lady of a breeding
so lofty, and a mind so well disciplined.

"I don't think," said Lady Selina, "that she was proud of him. She would
have been proud of his station, or rather of that to which his fame and
fortune would have raised her, had she lived to enjoy it. But for a few
years after her marriage they were very poor; and though his rise at the
bar was sudden and brilliant, he was long wholly absorbed in his
profession, and lived in Bloomsbury. Mrs. Darrell was not proud of that.
The Crookes are generally fine, give themselves airs, marry into great
houses if they can: but we can't naturalize them; they always remain
Crookes,--useful connections, very! Carr says we have not a more
useful,--but third-rate, my dear. All the Crookes are bad wives, because