asked for nothing that she herself did not give in abundance, and with
beauty super-added. Her propensity to bet sprang of her passion for
combat; she was not greedy of money, or reckless in using it; but a
difference of opinion arising, her instinct forcibly prompted her to
back her own. If the stake was the risk of a lover's life, she was ready
to put down the stake, and would have marvelled contemptuously at the
lover complaining. "Sheep! sheep!" she thought of those who dared not
fight, and had a wavering tendency to affix the epithet to those who
simply did not fight.

Withal, Mrs. Lovell was a sensible person; clearheaded and shrewd;
logical, too, more than the run of her sex: I may say, profoundly
practical. So much so, that she systematically reserved the after-years
for enlightenment upon two or three doubts of herself, which struck her
in the calm of her spirit, from time to time.

"France," Edward called her, in one of their colloquies.

It was an illuminating title. She liked the French (though no one was
keener for the honour of her own country in opposition to them), she
liked their splendid boyishness, their unequalled devotion, their
merciless intellects; the oneness of the nation when the sword is bare
and pointing to chivalrous enterprise.

She liked their fine varnish of sentiment, which appears so much on the
surface that Englishmen suppose it to have nowhere any depth; as if the
outer coating must necessarily exhaust the stock, or as if what is at
the source of our being can never be made visible.

She had her imagination of them as of a streaming banner in the jaws
of storm, with snows among the cloud-rents and lightning in the
chasms:--which image may be accounted for by the fact that when a girl
she had in adoration kissed the feet of Napoleon, the giant of the later
ghosts of history.

It was a princely compliment. She received it curtseying, and disarmed
the intended irony. In reply, she called him "Great Britain." I regret
to say that he stood less proudly for his nation. Indeed, he flushed.
He remembered articles girding at the policy of peace at any price, and
half felt that Mrs. Lovell had meant to crown him with a Quaker's
hat. His title fell speedily into disuse; but, "Yes, France," and "No,
France," continued, his effort being to fix the epithet to frivolous
allusions, from which her ingenuity rescued it honourably.

Had she ever been in love? He asked her the question. She stabb