The necessity of so conducting herself as to prevent the shadow of slander from visiting her, had continued this state of dependence during all her married life. She had never stept across a street without attendance; nor put on her gloves, but as brought to her by a servant. Her look had commanded obedience, and her will had been law with those about her. This was now to be altered. She scarcely reverted in her mind to these minutiæ; and when she did, it was to smile at herself for being able to give weight to such trifles. She was not aware how, hereafter, these small things would become the shapings and embodyings which desertion and penury would adopt, to sting her most severely. The new course she was about to enter, was too unknown to make her fears distinct. There was one vast blank before her, one gigantic and mishapen image of desertion, which filled her mind to the exclusion of every other, but whose parts were not made out, though this very indistinctness was the thing that often chiefly appalled her. She said, with the noble exile,[2]-- "I am too old to fawn upon a nurse, Too far in years to be a pupil now." It is true that she had not, like him, to lament that-- "My native English, now I must forego;" but there is another language, even more natural than the mere dialect in which we have been educated. When our lips no longer utter the sentiments of our heart--when we are forced to exchange the spontaneous effusions of the soul for cramped and guarded phrases, which give no indication of the thought within,--then, indeed, may we say, that our tongue becomes . . . "an unstringed viol, or a harp, . . . . . . put into his hands, That knows no touch to tune the harmony." And this was to be Lady Lodore's position. Her only companions would be villagers; or, at best, a few Welsh gentry, with whom she could have no real communication. Sympathy, the charm of life, was dead for her, and her state of banishment would be far more complete than if mountains and seas only constituted its barriers.