‘Perhaps you are right,’ said he; then, after a long silence, he added: ‘It is a fortunate thing after all when the faults of a man’s temperament are the source of some disappointment in early life, because then they rarely endanger his subsequent career. Let him only escape the just punishment, whatever it be, and the chances are that they embitter every hour of his after-life. His whole care and study being not correction, but concealment, he lives a life of daily duplicity; the fear of detection is over him at every step he takes; and he plays a part so constantly that he loses all real character at last in the frequency of dissimulation. Shall I tell you a little incident with which I became acquainted in early life. If you have nothing better to do, it may while away the hours before dinner.’ CHAPTER XIII. THE ABBE’S STORY ‘Without tiring you with any irrelevant details of the family and relatives of my hero, if I dare call him such, I may mention that he was the second son of an old Belgian family of some rank and wealth, and that in accordance with the habits of his house he was educated for the career of diplomacy. For this purpose, a life of travel was deemed the best preparation--foreign languages being the chief requisite, with such insight into history, national law, and national usages as any young man with moderate capacity and assiduity can master in three or four years. ‘The chief of the Dutch mission at Frankfort was an old diplomat of some distinction, but who, had it not been from causes purely personal towards the king, would not have quitted The Hague for any embassy whatever. He was a widower, with an only daughter--one of those true types of Dutch beauty which Terburg was so fond of painting. There are people who can see nothing but vulgarity in the class of features I speak of, and yet nothing in reality is farther from it. Hers was a mild, placid face, a wide, candid-looking forehead, down either side of which two braids of sunny brown hair fell; her skin, fair as alabaster, had the least tinge of colour, but her lips were full, and of a carmine hue, that gave a character of brilliancy to the whole countenance; her figure inclined to embonpoint, was exquisitely moulded, and in her walk there appeared the composed and resolute carriage of one whose temperament, however mild and unruffled, was still based on principles too strong to be shaken. She was indeed a perfect specimen of her nation, embodying in her character the thrift, the propriety, the high sense of honour, the rigid habits of order, so eminently Dutch; but withal there ran through her nature the golden thread of romance, and beneath that mild eyebrow there were the thoughts and hopes of a highly imaginative mind.