📔 Ethel Churchill

However, the poor old lady is in great distress; she and her grandaughter are coming up to London, and I wish to give them all possible countenance and assistance.

"Yes," interrupted his uncle, with something between a smile and a sneer, "to decide on the merits of rival actresses; to bear away a few bon-mots from the coffee-houses; to see that the fashion of your hair is not too much behind hand; and to choose the newest embroidery for your waistcoat."

"Well, I promise you to circumscribe her conquests as much as possible by extending my own," returned Henrietta. "It will be an easy task; for Miss Churchill does not do 'the honours of her eyes.' I often tell her her beauty is quite wasted upon her."

"As you cannot make a speech, you must," said Henrietta, "put it into a treatise."

Ethel was silent from surprise: she had prepared herself for anger—even sorrow; but ridicule left her without an answer. What could she say to a hearer, who only smiled, and to whom emotion was only a scene in a pastoral?

Slowly her thoughts reverted to herself; the blood rushed to her brow. What would she be to-morrow? the mark for obloquy and ridicule! disgraced, and for what? to minister to the wretched vanity of one whom she loathed even more than she scorned.

"You must not come to me," answered her listener, "for a defence of society; I have long since loathed its bitterness as much as I despise its baseness. You cannot know the miserably mean motives that actuate the generality; but the trifles so sought give their own narrowness to the mind."

In each of the windows was a beaupot, and the roses were fresh, as if still on their native bough:...

As Hortense says of the gilded knicknackery of her saloon,— "Est-ce utile? C'est plus, c'est nécessaire."

Few, save the poor, feel for the poor: / The rich know not, how hard / It is to be of needful food / And needful rest debarred. / Their paths are paths of plenteousness, / They sleep on silk and down; / And never think how heavily / The weary head lies down.