wish you to judge of before I send it
to the 'Traveller.'"

"Indeed!" said Ermine, her colour rising. "Would it not be better--"

"Oh, I know what you mean, but don't scruple on that score. At my age,
with a mother like mine, it is simply to avoid teasing and excitement
that I am silent."

"I was going to say I was hardly a fair--"

"Because of your different opinions? But those go for nothing. You are
a worthy antagonist, and enter into my views as my mother and sister
cannot do, even while you oppose them."

"But I don't think I can help you, even if--"

"I don't want help; I only want you to judge of the composition. In
fact, I read it to you that I may hear it myself."

Ermine resigned herself.

"'Curatolatry is a species--'"

"I beg your pardon."

"Curatolatry. Ah! I thought that would attract attention."

"But I am afraid the scholars would fall foul of it."

"Why, have not they just made Mariolatry?"

"Yes; but they are very severe on hybrids between Latin and Greek."

"It is not worth while to boggle at trifles when one has an expressive
term," said Rachel; "if it turns into English, that is all that is
wanted."

"Would it not be rather a pity if it should turn into English? Might it
not be hard to brand with a contemptuous name what does more good than
harm?"

"That sickly mixture of flirtation and hero worship, with a religious
daub as a salve to the conscience."

"Laugh it down, and what do you leave? In Miss Austen's time silly girls
ran to balls after militiamen, now, if they run to schools and charities
more for the curate's sake than they quite know, is not the alternative
better?"

"It is greater humbug," said Rachel. "But I knew you would not agree, at
least beforehand, it is appreciation that I want."

Never did Madame de Genlis make a cleverer hit than in the reading of
the Genius Phanor's tragedy in the Palace of Truth. Comically absurd
as the inconsistency is of transporting the lecture of a Parisian
academician into an enchanted palace, full of genii and fairies of the
remotest possible connexion with the Arab jinn, the whole is redeemed
by the truth to nature of the sole dupe in the Palace of Truth being the
author reading his own works. Ermine was thinking of him all the time.
She was under none of the constraint of Phanor's auditors, though she
carried a perpetual palace of truth about with her; she would not have
had either fears or compunctions in criticising, if she c