In the love of being distinguished above her compeers, Lady de Chere, however, far excelled; attaining a perfection which her exceedingly clever and powerful understanding, together with the management of her conduct, and an appearance of general decorum, enabled her to preserve. Nor were her moral qualities alone conducive to her success: she had besides the advantage of being able to set her face like a flint (which indeed it resembled physically), and she deemed all emotion or all expression of natural feeling (even that of bodily kind) to be a weakness unworthy of a woman of fashion. Lady de Chere was once known on an occasion of personal suffering, when a few tears actually escaped her, to have exclaimed to her attendant: "You are the first person in the world who have ever seen me guilty of such weakness." Nay, she even carried this perfection of induration so far, as to boast of having cut her own mother. In this last instance of the perfectibility of _ton_, Lady Boileau yielded not the palm--she had remained a good many more years than she had bargained for, unmarried--she had studied under a mother, whose lessons eventually were but too well rewarded in kind. This mother, however, had loved _her_; and with much and unremitting labour, had effected for her an alliance of title--of wealth. What more could either of them with their views desire? Lady Marchmont had established her daughter greatly, and the daughter had accepted the marriage upon certain calculations: such as being her own mistress, independent of her husband, or her mother; who knew too well _de quel bois elle se chauffoit_, for Lady Boileau to like her surveillance. Lady Boileau had then made no scruple of swearing to love, honour, and obey him whom she loved _not_, held _cheap_, and determined to _resist_. But these words, and too many more, bear a totally different signification, it is well known, in the language of _ton_, from what they do in their common acceptation.