will and inward efforts,--her mind
would draw comparisons between her husband and Arthur Fletcher. There
was some peculiar gift, or grace, or acquirement belonging without
dispute to the one, and which the other lacked. What was it? She had
heard her father say when talking of gentlemen,--of that race of
gentlemen with whom it had been his lot to live,--that you could not
make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. The use of the proverb had
offended her much, for she had known well whom he had then regarded
as a silk purse and whom as a sow's ear. But now she perceived that
there had been truth in all this, though she was as anxious as ever
to think well of her husband, and to endow him with all possible
virtues. She had once ventured to form a doctrine for herself, to
preach to herself a sermon of her own, and to tell herself that this
gift of gentle blood and of gentle nurture, of which her father
thought so much, and to which something of divinity was attributed
down in Herefordshire, was after all but a weak, spiritless quality.
It could exist without intellect, without heart, and with very
moderate culture. It was compatible with many littlenesses and with
many vices. As for that love of honest, courageous truth which her
father was wont to attribute to it, she regarded his theory as based
upon legends, as in earlier years was the theory of the courage, and
constancy, and loyalty of the knights of those days. The beau ideal
of a man which she then pictured to herself was graced, first with
intelligence, then with affection, and lastly with ambition. She knew
no reason why such a hero as her fancy created should be born of
lords and ladies rather than of working mechanics, should be English
rather than Spanish or French. The man could not be her hero without
education, without attributes to be attained no doubt more easily
by the rich than by the poor; but, with that granted, with those
attained, she did not see why she, or why the world, should go back
beyond the man's own self. Such had been her theories as to men and
their attributes, and acting on that, she had given herself and all
her happiness into the keeping of Ferdinand Lopez. Now, there was
gradually coming upon her a change in her convictions,--a change that
was most unwelcome, that she strove to reject,--one which she would
not acknowledge that she had adopted even while adopting it. But
now,--ay, from the very hour of her marriage,--she had commenced to
lea