Otherwise the world presents itself to them under too settled an aspect—­unless, of course, Vesuvian Revolution shakes the land.  And that touches only their nerves.  I dream of some old Judge!  There is one—­if having caught we could keep him.  But I dread so tricksy a pilot.  You have guessed him—­the ancient Puck!  We have laughed all day over the paper telling us of his worrying the Lords.  Lady Esquart congratulates her husband on being out of it.  Puck ‘biens ride’ and bewigged might perhaps—­except that at the critical moment he would be sure to plead allegiance to Oberon.  However, the work will be performed by some one:  I am prophetic:—­when maidens are grandmothers!—­when your Tony is wearing a perpetual laugh in the unhusbanded regions where there is no institution of the wedding-tie.’

For the reason that she was not to participate in the result of the old Judge’s or young hero’s happy championship of the cause of her sex, she conceived her separateness high aloof, and actually supposed she was a contemplative, simply speculative political spirit, impersonal albeit a woman.  This, as Emma, smiling at the lines, had not to learn, was always her secret pride of fancy—­the belief in her possession of a disengaged intellect.

The strange illusion, so clearly exposed to her correspondent, was maintained through a series of letters very slightly descriptive, dated from the Piraeus, the Bosphorus, the coasts of the Crimea, all more or less relating to the latest news of the journals received on board the yacht, and of English visitors fresh from the country she now seemed fond of calling ‘home.’  Politics, and gentle allusions to the curious exhibition of ‘love in marriage’ shown by her amiable host and hostess:  ’these dear Esquarts, who are never tired of one another, but courtly courting, tempting me to think it possible that a fortunate selection and a mutual deference may subscribe to human happiness:—­filled the paragraphs.  Reviews of her first literary venture were mentioned once:  ’I was well advised by Mr. Redworth in putting Antonia for authoress.  She is a buff jerkin to the stripes, and I suspect that the signature of D. E. M., written in full, would have cawed woefully to hear that her style is affected, her characters nullities, her cleverness forced, etc., etc.  As it is, I have much the same contempt for poor Antonia’s performance.  Cease penning, little fool!  She writes, “with some comprehension of the passion of love.”  I know her to be a stranger to the earliest cry.  So you see, dear, that utter ignorance is the mother of the Art.  Dialogues “occasionally pointed.”  She has a sister who may do better.—­But why was I not apprenticed to a serviceable profession or a trade?  I perceive now that a hanger-on of the market had no right to expect a happier fate than mine has been.’