‘But why do you pay attention to her?  Why . . . !’ exclaimed Mr. Gosling, a gentleman of the City, whose roundness would have turned a rifle-shot.

‘To allow her to wound you so seriously!’ exclaimed Mrs. Gosling.

‘Madam, if she were my wife,’ the General explained, ’I should feel it.  I say it is the fact of it; I feel it, if I appear so extremely ridiculous to a human eye, to any one eye.’

‘To Lady Camper’s eye.’

He admitted it might be that.  He had not thought of ascribing the acuteness of his pain to the miserable image he presented in this particular lady’s eye.  No; it really was true, curiously true:  another lady’s eye might have transformed him to a pumpkin shape, exaggerated all his foibles fifty-fold, and he, though not liking it, of course not, would yet have preserved a certain manly equanimity.  How was it Lady Camper had such power over him?—­a lady concealing seventy years with a rouge-box or paint-pot!  It was witchcraft in its worst character.  He had for six months at her bidding been actually living the life of a beast, degraded in his own esteem; scorched by every laugh he heard; running, pursued, overtaken, and as it were scored or branded, and then let go for the process to be repeated.

CHAPTER VIII

Our young barbarians have it all their own way with us when they fall into love-liking; they lead us whither they please, and interest us in their wishings, their weepings, and that fine performance, their kissings.  But when we see our veterans tottering to their fall, we scarcely consent to their having a wish; as for a kiss, we halloo at them if we discover them on a byway to the sacred grove where such things are supposed to be done by the venerable.  And this piece of rank injustice, not to say impoliteness, is entirely because of an unsound opinion that Nature is not in it, as though it were our esteem for Nature which caused us to disrespect them.  They, in truth, show her to us discreet, civilized, in a decent moral aspect:  vistas of real life, views of the mind’s eye, are opened by their touching little emotions; whereas those bully youngsters who come bellowing at us and catch us by the senses plainly prove either that we are no better than they, or that we give our attention to Nature only when she makes us afraid of her.  If we cared for her, we should be up and after her reverentially in her sedater steps, deeply studying her in her slower paces.  She teaches them nothing when they are whirling.  Our closest instructors, the true philosophers—­ the story-tellers, in short-will learn in time that Nature is not of necessity always roaring, and as soon as they do, the world may be said to be enlightened.  Meantime, in the contemplation of a pair of white whiskers fluttering round a pair of manifestly painted cheeks, be assured that Nature is in it:  not that hectoring wanton—­but let the young have their fun.  Let the superior interest of the passions of the aged be conceded, and not a word shall be said against the young.