The Countess smiled on them with a lovely sorrow.
'Safe from the whisper, my dears; the ceaseless dread?
If you knew what I have to endure! I sometimes envy you.

'Pon my honour, I sometimes wish I had married a fishmonger! Silva, indeed, is a most excellent husband.
Polished! such polish as you know not of in England.

He has a way--a wriggle with his shoulders in company--I cannot describe it to you; so slight! so elegant! and he is all that a woman could desire.

But who could be safe in any part of the earth, my dears, while papa will go about so, and behave so extraordinarily?
I was at dinner at your English embassy a month ago, and there was Admiral Combleman, then on the station off Lisbon, Sir Jackson Racial's friend, who was the Admiral at Lymport formerly.

I knew him at once, and thought, oh! what shall I do! My heart was like a lump of lead.