To convince Lady Millicent of this truth would, however, have required eloquence far greater than that possessed by the lowly-born clergyman, who certainly had not chosen the very likeliest way in the world to gain his ends. As milady had truly said, there were but two ways of accounting for the reverend gentleman’s preposterous conduct, and neither of those two ways was calculated to throw a roseate hue over the matter. That Rhoda--her favourite, because her most submissive, daughter--had degraded herself to the degree of giving encouragement to “the man” for whose audacity no words were sufficiently severe, caused as much surprise and indignation to the magnificent widow as if she had systematically and kindly encouraged her child to pour out into the maternal breast her cares, her sorrows, and her joys. That a heart, young and love-requiring, will, in default of home aliment, seek elsewhere for its natural, and in some cases even necessary, food, this mother, engrossed by her own plans and projects for personal aggrandisement and power, had never yet suspected. Lady Millicent--a stay-at-home, “domestic” woman, a “widow indeed,” and one of those constitutionally prudent matrons against whom the tongue of scandal never had for a single instant wagged--was precisely one of those individuals with whom self-deception is the very easiest thing in life. Her hopes and wishes, her thoughts and fancies, never--that she could truly have said--soared above or beyond the boundaries of her own property; and the interests of her children, she had taught herself to believe, were the groundwork and the motive power of all the hard, unwomanly business that she had set herself to do.