The victory of the ashen laurels drove her mind inward to gird at the hateful yoke, in compassion for its pair of victims.

Quite earnestly by such means, yet always bearing a comical eye on her subterfuges, she escaped the extremes of personal blame.

Those advocates of her opponent in and out of court compelled her honest heart to search within and own to faults.

But were they not natural faults?
It was her marriage; it was marriage in the abstract: her own mistake and the world's clumsy machinery of civilization: these were the capital offenders: not the wife who would laugh ringingly, and would have friends of the other sex, and shot her epigrams at the helpless despot, and was at times--yes, vixenish; a nature driven to it, but that was the word.

She was too generous to recount her charges against the vanquished.