“It’s true enough.  But thats not the mischief.  Douglas:  I tell you she’s the cleverest woman in London.  She can do anything she likes.  She can manage a conversation with any foreigner in his own language, whether she knows it or not.  She gabbles Italian like a native.  She can learn off her part in a new piece, music and all, between breakfast and luncheon, any day.  She can cook:  she can make a new bonnet out of the lining of an old coat:  she can drive a bargain with a Jew.  She says she never learns a thing at all unless she can learn it in ten minutes.  She can fence, and shoot.  She can dance anything in the world.  I never knew such a mimic as she is.  If you saw her take off the Bones at the Christy Minstrels, you’d say she was the lowest of the low.  Next minute she will give herself the airs of a duchess, or do the ingenuous in a style that would make Conny burst with envy.  To see her preaching like George would make you laugh for a week.  There’s nothing she couldnt do if she chose.  And now, what do you think she has taken to?  Liquor.  Champagne by the gallon.  She used to drink it by the bottle:  now she drinks it by the dozen—­by the case.  She wanted it to keep up her spirits.  That was the way it began.  If she felt down, a glass of champagne would set her up.  Then she was always feeling down, and always setting herself up.  At last feeling down came to mean the same thing as being sober.  You dont know what a drunken woman is, Douglas, unless youve lived in the same house with one.”  Douglas recoiled, and looked very sternly at Marmaduke, who proceeded more vehemently.  “She’s nothing but a downright beast.  She’s either screaming at you in a fit of rage, or clawing at you in a fit of fondness that makes you sick.  When she falls asleep, there she is, a besotted heap tumbled anyhow into bed, snoring and grunting like a pig.  When she wakes, she begins planning how to get more liquor.  Think of what you or I would feel if we saw our mothers tipsy.  By God, that child of mine wouldnt believe its eyes if it saw its mother sober.  Only for Lucy, I’d have pitched her over long ago.  I did all I could when I first saw that she was overdoing the champagne.  I swore I’d break the neck of any man I caught bringing wine into the house.  I sacked the whole staff of servants twice because I found a lot of fresh corks swept into the dustpan.  I stopped drinking at home myself:  I got in doctors to frighten her:  I tried bribing, coaxing, threatening:  I knocked her down once when I caught her with a bottle in her hand; and she fell with her head against the fender, and frightened me a good deal more than she hurt herself.  It was no use.  Sometimes she used to defy me, and say she would drink, she didnt care whether she was killing herself or not.  Other times she cried; implored me to save her from destroying herself; asked me why I didnt thrash the life out of her whenever I caught her drunk; promised on her oath never to touch another drop.  The same