The things we do!

But when the family
chief neglects his wife, or prefers another to her, the children too,
courtiers as we are, will desert her. You look incredulous about domestic
love. Tenez, my child, if I may so surmise, I think you cannot have seen
it.
Ethel (blushing, and thinking, perhaps, how she esteems her father, how
her mother, and how much they esteem each other). My father and mother
have been most kind to all their children, madame; and no one can say
that their marriage has been otherwise than happy. My mother is the
kindest and most affectionate mother, and--(Here a vision of Sir Brian
alone in his room, and nobody really caring for him so much as his valet,
who loves him to the extent of fifty pounds a year and perquisites; or,
perhaps, Miss Cann, who reads to him, and plays a good deal of evenings,
much to Sir Brian's liking--here this vision, we say, comes, and stops
Miss Ethel's sentence.)
Madame de F. Your father, in his infirmity--and yet he is five years
younger than Colonel Newcome--is happy to have such a wife and such
children.


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