. Vivian Ducie lays great stress
on her eyes and eyebrows, and, I think, her hair. With a Frenchwoman's
figure, that is enough to make men crazy. He says her husband
deserves--but what will not young men write? It is deeply to be
regretted that Englishmen abroad--women the same, I fear--get the
Continental tone in morals. But how Captain Beauchamp could expect to
carry on an Election and an intrigue together, only a head like his can
tell us. Grancey is in high indignation with him. It does not concern
the Election, you can imagine. Something that man Dr. Shrapnel has done,
which he says Captain Beauchamp could have prevented. Quarrels of men!
I have instructed Palmet to write to Vivian Ducie for a photograph of
Madame de Rouaillout. Do you know, one has a curiosity to see the face
of the woman for whom a man ruins himself. But I say again, he ought to
be married.'

'That there may be two victims?' Cecilia said it smiling.

She was young in suffering, and thought, as the unseasoned and
inexperienced do, that a mask is a concealment.

'Married--settled; to have him bound in honour,' said Mrs. Lespel. 'I
had a conversation with him when he was at Itchincope; and his look,
and what I know of his father, that gallant and handsome Colonel Richard
Beauchamp, would give one a kind of confidence in him; supposing always
that he is not struck with one of those deadly passions that are like
snakes, like magic. I positively believe in them. I have seen them.
And if they end, they end as if the man were burnt out, and was ashes
inside; as you see Mr. Stukely Culbrett, all cynicism. You would not now
suspect him of a passion! It is true. Oh, I know it! That is what the
men go to. The women die. Vera Winter died at twenty-three. Caroline
Ormond was hardly older. You know her story; everybody knows it. The
most singular and convincing case was that of Lord Alfred Burnley and
Lady Susan Gardiner, wife of the general; and there was an instance of
two similarly afflicted--a very rare case, most rare: they never could
meet to part! It was almost ludicrous. It is now quite certain that they
did not conspire to meet. At last the absolute fatality became so well
understood by the persons immediately interested--You laugh?'

'Do I laugh?' said Cecilia.

'We should all know the world, my dear, and you are a strong head. The
knowledge is only dangerous for fools. And if romance is occasionally
ridiculous, as I own it can be, humdrum, I pro