nor a drawing animal, nor a dancing animal: he wants a talking animal.
But to talk they are never taught; all they know of conversation is
slander, and that "comes by nature."

But Constance _did_ talk _beautifully_; not like a pedant, or a blue, or a
Frenchwoman. A child would have been as much charmed with her as a
scholar; but _both_ would have been charmed. Her father's eloquence had
descended to her; but in him eloquence commanded, in her it won. There
was another trait she possessed in common with her father: Vernon (as most
disappointed men are wont) had done the world injustice by his
accusations. It was not his poverty and his distresses alone which had
induced his party to look coolly on his declining day. They were not
without some apparent excuse for desertion--they doubted his _sincerity_.
It is true that it was without actual cause. No modern politician had
ever been more consistent. He had refused bribes, though poor; and place,
though ambitious. But he was essentially--here is the secret--essentially
an intriguant. Bred in the old school of policy, he thought that
manoeuvring was wisdom, and duplicity the art of governing. Like
Lysander,[1] he loved plotting, yet neglected self-interest. There was
not a man less open, or more honest. This character, so rare in all
countries, is especially so in England. Your blunt squires, your
politicians at Bellamy's, do not comprehend it. They saw in Vernon the
arts which deceive enemies, and they dreaded lest, though his friends,
they themselves should be deceived. This disposition, so fatal to Vernon,
his daughter inherited. With a dark, bold, and passionate genius, which
in a man would have led to the highest enterprises, she linked the
feminine love of secrecy and scheming. To borrow again from Plutarch and
Lysander, "When the skin of the lion fell short, she was quite of opinion
that it should be eked out with the fox's."