"Positively none at all, my lord; and I cannot conceive how my father, who until then had been so completely a slave to the dictates of worldly propriety, did not reflect that the utter incapacity of this woman must shamefully proclaim the real cause of her being in the house. My mother earnestly pointed out to him the extreme ignorance of Madame Roland; he, however, merely replied, in a tone which admitted of no further argument, that, competent or otherwise, the young and interesting widow should retain the situation in his establishment in which he had placed her. This I heard subsequently. From that instant my poor mother comprehended the whole affair, over which she deeply grieved; regretting less, I fancy, her husband's infidelity than the domestic unhappiness which would result from so indecorous a _liaison_, the account of which she feared might reach my ears." "But, even so far as his foolish passion was concerned, it seems to me that your father acted very unwisely in introducing this woman into his house." "And you would be still more at a loss to understand his conduct if you had but known the extreme formality and circumspection of his character. Nothing could ever have induced him thus to trample under foot all the established rules of society but the unbounded influence of Madame Roland,--an influence she exercised with so much the more certainty as she veiled her designs under the mask of the most passionate love for him." "But what was your father's age then?" "About sixty." "And he really credited the professions of love made by so much younger a woman?" "My father had been in his time one of the most fashionable and admired men of the day. And Madame Roland, either following the suggestions of her own artful mind or urged on by the counsels of others, who could countenance much more--" "Counsel such a person!"