I have no doubt that this civility of hers resulted, in the first instance, from something said by Lady Mervyn as to his admiration for Kitty, and the desirability of encouraging him as much as possible. But though this may have been the original motive of the _empressement_ with which Mrs. Rollin received him, there was no fear of her not welcoming him for his own sake when once she had made acquaintance with him and discovered what he was like. For she was a person who held that the most important matter in life was to stand well in the world's opinion, and consequently she was quite charmed with his scrupulous regard for _convenances_ and extreme horror of doing anything that could shock Mrs. Grundy. "There's nothing of more consequence," Mrs. Rollin would declare, "than to keep up appearances, because, provided one does that, one is quite safe to be thought perfect. And that's what every one wishes to be thought, or, if they don't, they ought to. I call it quite wicked of any one to pretend that it doesn't matter what the world's opinion about them is. Depend upon it, that whatever the whole world thinks _can't_ be wrong; and that if a person is generally condemned or praised, there's always some good reason for the blame or the approval." Keeping up appearances in the eyes of the world was, therefore, her standard of perfection; and she strove zealously never to fall short of that standard, and always to fulfil its requirements punctiliously. Nevertheless, it would be a mistake to deduce from this that she was such an abject slave of the world's opinion as to let herself be governed by it in things which it did not see. On the contrary, she drew a line between her public and private actions, and did not allow it to interfere at all with the latter. If she had tastes and inclinations to which it objected, she did not, on that account, sacrifice them, if it was possible that they could be indulged in secret. How she would act, under such circumstances, was illustrated by her behaviour regarding French novels. These she preferred to any other kind of reading, and greedily devoured as many as she could lay hold of. But as she knew that the world sometimes thinks fit to frown at an indiscriminate study of these books (who shall say whether that disapprobation is real or feigned?), therefore she was careful not to reveal her partiality for them. Yet she did not rush to the opposite extreme and disclaim any acquaintance whatsoever with that class of literature. She had no idea of hiding her light under a bushel, and not being duly credited with as many accomplishments as she possessed, and therefore liked to have it known that she understood a foreign language well enough to read and enjoy works written in it. So what she did was, to profess to read French novels solely with the laudable object of keeping up her French; while, at the same time, she was most cautious in talking about them in public, and never betrayed the slightest