nery; and when such revelations are given prosaically, with all
the circumstances of date, time, and place, unrelieved by the slightest
spice of wit or imagination, but simply narrated as "Memoires pour
servir a l'Histoire" of an individual, the world is very apt to accept
them as evidences of knowledge of life, rather than what they really
are, proofs of a malignant disposition. In this way, Haggerstone seemed
to many the mere "old soldier," and nothing more; whereas, if nature had
given him either fancy or epigrammatic smartness, he would have been set
down for the incarnation of slander.

It may seem strange that Lady Hester, who had lived a good deal in the
world, should never have met a character of this type, but so it was;
she belonged to a certain "fast set" in society, who seem to ask for a
kind of indemnity for all they do, by never, on any occasion, stopping
to criticise their neighbors. This semblance of good nature is a better
defensive armor than the uninitiated know of, enlisting all loose
sympathies with its possessor, and even gaining for its advocates that
great floating majority who speak much and think little.

In London, Haggerstone would have at once appeared the very worst
"ton," and she would have avoided the acquaintance of a man so unhappily
gifted; but here, at Baden, with nothing to do, none to speak to, he
became actually a prize, and she listened to him for hours with pleasure
as he recounted all the misdeeds of those "dear, dear friends" who had
made up her own "world." There was at heart, too, the soothing flattery
that whispered, "He can say nothing of me; the worst he can hint is,
that I married a man old enough to be my father, and if I did, I am
heartily sorry for the mistake."

He was shrewd enough soon to detect the family differences that
prevailed, and to take advantage of them, not by any imprudent or
ill-advised allusion to what would have enlisted her Ladyship's pride
in opposition, but by suggesting occupations and amusements that he saw
would be distasteful to the others, and thus alienate her more and more
from their companionship. In fact, his great object was to make Lady
Hester a disciple of that new school which owns Georges Sand for its
patron, "and calls itself Lionue." It would be foreign to our purpose
here were we to stop and seek to what social causes this new sect owes
existence. In a great measure it may be traced to the prevailing taste
of men for club life, t