CHAPTER XXVII.
AN INTERVIEW.
Why, life must mock itself to mark how small
Are the distinctions of its various pride.
'Tis strange how we delight in the unreal;
The fanciful and the fantastic make
One half our triumphs. Not in mighty things—
The glorious offerings of our mind to fate—
Do we ask homage to our vanities,
One half so much as from the false and vain:
The petty trifles that the social world
Has fancied into grandeur.
When a woman has once made up her mind to be imprudent, she is very imprudent indeed; she is quite ingenious in contriving occasions. Thanks to her age, and the interest of old friends of the family, Mrs. Churchill had escaped without punishment for her amateur treason; and now, whether emboldened by an impunity which she most
