Hard as they may find it to observe other precepts of the Great Master, this one, at least, most women have practiced easily and naturally for eighteen hundred years: "Forgive, until seventy times seven." The acts of some of these--how they warred with their husbands and were worsted; how they provoked the presiding Draco, and stultified the attesting policeman by obstinately ignoring their injuries, written legibly in red, and black, and blue; how they interceded with many sobs for the aggressor--are they not written in the book of the chronicles of Bow-street and Clerkenwell?
This propensity leads them into scrapes, it is true, for our world, in its wisdom, will take advantage of such weakness. Perhaps the next will make them some amends.
But the mourner strewed no flowers on the grave. It would have been too bitter a mockery; for, if there were sympathy in sweet roses and pure white lilies, on no other spot of God's earth would they have withered so soon: she hung up no wreath of _immortelles_; for, if such things could be, the dearest wish one could have formed for the dead man's soul would have been swift, utter annihilation.
Yet Fanny Challoner would scarcely have accepted Mohun's good offices if she had guessed that the blood of her seducer and tyrant was on his hand. She never suspected it, and so went gratefully to the home he found for her; and there she lives yet, tranquil and contented, though always sad and humble, among people who know nothing of her history and love her dearly, trying her best to be useful in her generation--alone in her cottage, that nestles under a sunny cliff, just above the white spray-line of the Irish Sea.
"Let me see her once again. Let her bring her proud dark eyes, And her petulant quick replies; Let her wave her slender hand With its gesture of command, And throw back her raven hair With the old imperial air; Let her be as she was then-- The loveliest lady in all the land Iseult of Ireland."
Mohun and Livingstone soon fell back into the groove of their old habits; if any thing, the former was more forbidding and morose, the latter more reckless than ever.
Just at this time Mrs. Bellasys and her daughter arrived in Paris. It was Flora's _débût_ there, and she had an immense success. The _jeunesse dorée_ of the Chaussée d'Antin and the cavaliers of the Faubourg thronged about her, emulously enthusiastic. Her repartees and sarcasms were quoted like Talleyrand's. They never wearied in raving over her perfections, taking them in a regular catalogue--from her magnificent eyes and hair, that flashed back the light from its smooth bands like clouded steel, down to the small _brodequins_ of white satin, which it was her fancy to wear instead of the ball-room _chaussure_ of ordinary mortals. The intrigues to secure her for a waltz or a mazurka displayed diplomatic talent enough to have set half a dozen German principalities and powers by the ears. The succession of admirers was never broken; as fast as one dropped off, killed by her coldness or caprice, another stepped into his place. It reminded one of the old "Die-hards" at Waterloo, filling up their squares torn and ravaged by the pelting grape-shot.