With what smiles and curtseys they stab each other! with what compliments they hate each other! with what determination of long-suffering they won't be offended! with what innocent dexterity they can drop the drop of poison into the cup of conversation, hand round the goblet, smiling, to the whole family to drink, and make the dear, domestic circle miserable!)--I burst out of my parenthesis.

I fancy my Baroness and Countess smiling at each other a hundred years ago, and giving each other the hand or the cheek, and calling each other, My dear, My dear creature, My dear Countess, My dear Baroness, My dear sister--even, when they were most ready to fight.
"You wonder, my dear Maria, that the boy should be so polite ?" cries Madame de Bernstein.

"His mother was bred up by two very perfect gentlefolks.

Colonel Esmond had a certain grave courteousness, and a grand manner, which I do not see among the gentlemen nowadays." "Eh, my dear, we all of us praise our own time! My grandmamma used to declare there was nothing like Whitehall and Charles the Second." "My mother saw King James the Second's court for a short while, and though not a court-educated person, as you know,--her father was a country clergyman--yet was exquisitely well-bred.

The Colonel, her second husband, was a person of great travel and experience, as well as of learning, and had frequented the finest company of Europe.