high level of the sacred appearances. They are seen wherever smart
people ought to be seen, they do everything that smart people ought to
do; their Victoria is well appointed, their little house in Mayfair is
prettily furnished, and both they and their servants are always well
dressed. Upon the birth of the frail and solitary pledge of affection,
with which fate, after passing them by for many years, at length
afflicted them, their situation became almost desperate; but, by a
judicious curtailment here, and a discreet omission there, they managed
once more to strike a balance slightly in their own favour. Having
passed their child safely through the nursery into the school-room, they
combined with other parents to secure the services of governesses and
teachers, under whose instruction the square pegs of knowledge might be
fitted to the round holes of girlish brains. The future Invalid resented
this process by frequent head-aches, which were allowed to withdraw her
from her studies to the comfortable ignorance of the drawing-room sofa.
Eventually, however, she was considered to be finished, and, having been
carefully packed and labelled by her mother, was delivered, after a
journey through two seasons, to a rich and rising Member of Parliament,
who paid the carriage, and married the parcel.

And now the comforts of life, and its laziness, begin for her. For
whereas her parents were forced to pinch themselves in many places, in
order to assume the flush of wealth, and were unable to relax for a
moment the busy society vigilance in which their daughter had to bear
her part, there is, in the paradise of her new existence, a moneyed
repose, which permits her, on the pretence of weariness, to cease from
troubling herself about anything. This does not, however, prevent her
from becoming a cause of infinite trouble to others. Her maid is worn to
a shadow by the perpetual search for handkerchiefs and eau de Cologne,
with which to bathe the aching forehead of her mistress. Her friends are
distracted by the recital of her tales of shattered nerves, and
merciless _migraines_; her husband finds his existence embittered by a
constant change of butlers, and a perpetual succession of cooks, over
whom his feeble wife exercises about as much control as the President of
the French Republic over his short-lived Ministries. But, as yet, she
has not attained to the full and perfect glory of the Invalid's life.

During the next five years s