buse her power over the little colourless lady.
We cannot, when we find ourselves possessed of the gift of sending a
creature into convulsions, avoid exercising it. Mrs. Lupin was one of the
victims of the modern feminine 'ideal.' She was in mind merely a woman;
devout and charitable, as her nieces admitted; but radically--what? They
did not like to think, or to say, what;--repugnant, seemed to be the
word. A woman who consented to perceive the double-meaning, who
acknowledged its suggestions of a violation of decency laughable, and who
could not restrain laughter, was, in their judgement, righteously a
victim. After signal efforts to lift her up, the verdict was that their
Aunt Lupin did no credit to her sex. If we conceive a timorous little
body of finely-strung nerves, inclined to be gay, and shrewdly
apprehensive, but depending for her opinion of herself upon those about
her, we shall see that Mrs. Lupin's life was one of sorrow and scourges
in the atmosphere of the 'ideal.' Never did nun of the cloister fight
such a fight with the flesh, as this poor little woman, that she might
not give offence to the Tribunal of the Nice Feelings which leads us to
ask, "Is sentimentalism in our modern days taking the place of
monasticism to mortify our poor humanity?" The sufferings of the Three of
Brookfield under Mrs. Chump was not comparable to Mrs. Lupin's. The good
little woman's soul withered at the self-contempt to which her nieces
helped her daily. Laughter, far from expanding her heart and invigorating
her frame, was a thing that she felt herself to be nourishing as a
traitor in her bosom: and the worst was, that it came upon her like a
reckless intoxication at times, possessing her as a devil might; and
justifying itself, too, and daring to say, "Am I not Nature?" Mrs. Lupin
shrank from the remembrance of those moments.

In another age, the scenes between Mrs. Lupin and Mrs. Chump, greatly
significant for humanity as they are, will be given without offence on
one side or martyrdom on the other. At present, and before our
sentimentalists are a concrete, it would be profitless rashness to depict
them. When the great shots were fired off (Mrs. Chump being requested to
depart, and refusing) Mrs. Lupin fluttered between the belligerents,
doing her best to be a medium for the restoration of peace. In repeating
Mrs. Chump's remarks, which were rendered purposely strong with Irish
spice by that woman, she choked; and when she co