an to
read Bishop Jebb's Memoirs.

Chapter 4

I am by no means sure that if the good people of Milby had known the
truth about the Countess Czerlaski, they would not have been considerably
disappointed to find that it was very far from being as bad as they
imagined. Nice distinctions are troublesome. It is so much easier to say
that a thing is black, than to discriminate the particular shade of
brown, blue, or green, to which it really belongs. It is so much easier
to make up your mind that your neighbour is good for nothing, than to
enter into all the circumstances that would oblige you to modify that
opinion.

Besides, think of all the virtuous declamation, all the penetrating
observation, which had been built up entirely on the fundamental position
that the Countess was a very objectionable person indeed, and which would
be utterly overturned and nullified by the destruction of that premiss.
Mrs. Phipps, the banker's wife, and Mrs. Landor, the attorney's wife, had
invested part of their reputation for acuteness in the supposition that
Mr. Bridmain was not the Countess's brother. Moreover, Miss Phipps was
conscious that if the Countess was not a disreputable person, she, Miss
Phipps, had no compensating superiority in virtue to set against the
other lady's manifest superiority in personal charms. Miss Phipps's
stumpy figure and unsuccessful attire, instead of looking down from a
mount of virtue with an aureole round its head, would then be seen on the
same level and in the same light as the Countess Czerlaski's Diana-like
form and well-chosen drapery. Miss Phipps, for her part, didn't like
dressing for effect--she had always avoided that style of appearance
which was calculated to create a sensation.

Then what amusing innuendoes of the Milby gentlemen over their wine would
have been entirely frustrated and reduced to nought, if you had told them
that the Countess had really been guilty of no misdemeanours which
demanded her exclusion from strictly respectable society; that her
husband had been the veritable Count Czerlaski, who had had wonderful
escapes, as she said, and who, as she did _not_ say, but as was said in
certain circulars once folded by her fair hands, had subsequently given
dancing lessons in the metropolis; that Mr. Bridmain was neither more nor
less than her half-brother, who, by unimpeached integrity and industry,
had won a partnership in a silk-manufactory, and thereby a moderate
fortune