repose. All her servants adored Mrs. Ashleigh; all found it a pleasure to
please her; her establishment had the harmony of clockwork; comfort
diffused itself round her like quiet sunshine round a sheltered spot. To
gaze on her pleasing countenance, to listen to the simple talk that lapsed
from her guileless lips, in even, slow, and lulling murmur, was in itself
a respite from "eating cares." She was to the mind what the colour of
green is to the eye. She had, therefore, excellent sense in all that
relates to every-day life. There, she needed not to consult another;
there, the wisest might have consulted her with profit. But the moment
anything, however trivial in itself, jarred on the routine to which her
mind had grown wedded, the moment an incident hurried her out of the
beaten track of woman's daily life, then her confidence forsook her; then
she needed a confidant, an adviser; and by that confidant or adviser she
could be credulously lured or submissively controlled. Therefore, when
she lost, in Mr. Vigors, the guide she had been accustomed to consult
whenever she needed guidance, she turned; helplessly and piteously, first
to Mrs. Poyntz, and then yet more imploringly to me, because a woman of
that character is never quite satisfied without the advice of a man; and
where an intimacy more familiar than that of his formal visits is once
established with a physician, confidence in him grows fearless and rapid,
as the natural result of sympathy concentrated on an object of anxiety in
common between himself and the home which opens its sacred recess to his
observant but tender eye. Thus Mrs. Ashleigh had shown me Mr. Vigors's
letter, and, forgetting that I might not be as amiable as herself,
besought me to counsel her how to conciliate and soften her lost
husband's friend and connection. That character clothed him with dignity
and awe in her soft forgiving eyes. So, smothering my own resentment,
less perhaps at the tone of offensive insinuation against myself than at
the arrogance with which this prejudiced intermeddler implied to a mother
the necessity of his guardian watch over a child under her own care, I