Lady Vandeleur listened to this serenely enough; she tried at least to take the air of a woman who has no need of new arguments. “Do you know her very well?” she asked, as if she had been struck by my calling Miss Bernardstone by her Christian name. “Well enough to like her very much.” I was going to say “to pity her;” but I thought better of it. “She must be a person of very little spirit. If a man were to jilt me, I don’t think I should go out!” cried her ladyship with a laugh. “Nothing is more probable than that she has not your courage or your wisdom. She may be weak, but she is passionately in love with him.” I looked straight into Lady Vandeleur’s eyes as I said this, and I was conscious that it was a tolerably good description of my hostess. “Do you think she would really die?” she asked in a moment. “Die as if one should stab her with a knife. Some people don’t believe in broken hearts,” I continued. “I did n’t till I knew Joscelind Bernardstone; then I felt that she had one that would n’t be proof.” “One ought to live,--one ought always to live,” said Lady Yandeleur; “and always to hold up one’s head.” “Ah, I suppose that one ought n’t to feel at all, if one wishes to be a great success.” “What do you call a great success?” she asked. “Never having occasion to be pitied.” “Being pitied? That must be odious!” she said; and I saw that though she might wish for admiration, she would never wish for sympathy. Then, in a moment, she added that men, in her opinion, were very base,--a remark that was deep, but not, I think, very honest; that is, in so far as the purpose of it had been to give me the idea that Ambrose Tester had done nothing but press her, and she had done nothing but resist. They were very odd, the discrepancies in the statements of each of this pair; but it must be said for Lady Vandeleur that now that she had made up her mind (as I believed she had) to sacrifice herself, she really persuaded herself that she had not had a moment of weakness. She quite unbosomed herself, and I fairly assisted at her crisis. It appears that she had a conscience,--very much so, and even a high ideal of duty. She represented herself as moving heaven and earth to keep Ambrose Tester up to the mark, and you would never have guessed from what she told me that she had entertained ever so faintly the idea of marrying him. I am sure this was a dreadful perversion, but I forgave it on the score of that exaltation of which I have spoken. The things she said, and the way she said them, come back to me, and I thought that if she looked as handsome as that when she preached virtue to Mr. Tester, it was no wonder he liked the sermon to be going on perpetually.