to be the word.  A woman who consented to perceive the double-meaning, who acknowledged its suggestions of a violation of decency laughable, and who could not restrain laughter, was, in their judgement, righteously a victim.  After signal efforts to lift her up, the verdict was that their Aunt Lupin did no credit to her sex.  If we conceive a timorous little body of finely-strung nerves, inclined to be gay, and shrewdly apprehensive, but depending for her opinion of herself upon those about her, we shall see that Mrs. Lupin’s life was one of sorrow and scourges in the atmosphere of the ‘ideal.’  Never did nun of the cloister fight such a fight with the flesh, as this poor little woman, that she might not give offence to the Tribunal of the Nice Feelings which leads us to ask, “Is sentimentalism in our modern days taking the place of monasticism to mortify our poor humanity?” The sufferings of the Three of Brookfield under Mrs. Chump was not comparable to Mrs. Lupin’s.  The good little woman’s soul withered at the self-contempt to which her nieces helped her daily.  Laughter, far from expanding her heart and invigorating her frame, was a thing that she felt herself to be nourishing as a traitor in her bosom:  and the worst was, that it came upon her like a reckless intoxication at times, possessing her as a devil might; and justifying itself, too, and daring to say, “Am I not Nature?” Mrs. Lupin shrank from the remembrance of those moments.

In another age, the scenes between Mrs. Lupin and Mrs. Chump, greatly significant for humanity as they are, will be given without offence on one side or martyrdom on the other.  At present, and before our sentimentalists are a concrete, it would be profitless rashness to depict them.  When the great shots were fired off (Mrs. Chump being requested to depart, and refusing) Mrs. Lupin fluttered between the belligerents, doing her best to be a medium for the restoration of peace.  In repeating Mrs. Chump’s remarks, which were rendered purposely strong with Irish spice by that woman, she choked; and when she conveyed to Mrs. Chump the counter-remarks of the ladies, she provoked utterances that almost killed her.  A sadder life is not to be imagined.  The perpetual irritation of a desire to indulge in her mortal weakness, and listening to the sleepless conscience that kept watch over it; her certainty that it would be better for her to laugh right out, and yet her incapacity to contest the justice of her nieces’ rebuke; her struggle to resist Mrs. Chump, which ended in a sensation of secret shameful liking for her—­all these warring influences within were seen in her behaviour.