they are never satisfied with their own homes, but are always trying to
get into great people's homes. Not very long before she died, Mrs.
Darrell took her friend and relation, Mrs. Lyndsay, to live with her.
I suspect it was not from affection, or any great consideration for Mrs.
Lyndsay's circumstances (which were indeed those of actual destitution,
till--thanks to Mr. Darrell--she won her lawsuit), but simply because she
looked to Mrs. Lyndsay to get her into our set. Mrs. Lyndsay was a great
favourite with all of us, charming manners,--perfectly correct, too,--
thorough Vipont, thorough gentlewoman, but artful! Oh, so artful! She
humoured poor Mrs. Darrell's absurd vanity; but she took care not to
injure herself. Of course, Darrell's wife, and a Vipont--though only a
Vipont Crooke--had free passport into the outskirts of good society, the
great parties, and so forth. But there it stopped; even I should have
been compromised if I had admitted into our set a woman who was bent on
compromising herself. Handsome, in a bad style, not the Vipont
/tournure/; and not only silly and flirting, but (we are alone, keep the
secret) decidedly vulgar, my dear."

"You amaze me! How such a man--" Honoria stopped, colouring up to the
temples.

"Clever men," said Lady Selina, "as a general rule, do choose the oddest
wives! The cleverer a man is, the more easily, I do believe, a woman can
take him in. However, to do Mr. Darrell justice, he has been taken in
only once. After Mrs. Darrell's death, Mrs. Lyndsay, I suspect, tried
her chance, but failed. Of course, she would not actually stay in the
same house with a widower who was then young, and who had only to get rid
of a wife to whom one was forced to be shy in order to be received into
our set with open arms, and, in short, to be of the very best monde. Mr.
Darrell came into Parliament immensely rich (a legacy from an old East