relations of the family revealed themselves during its progress, and that my presence did nothing to hinder that revelation, afforded me considerable gratification.

How often it happens that for years one sees a family cover themselves over with a conventional cloak of decorum, and preserve the real relations of its members a secret from every eye! How often, too, have I remarked that, the more impenetrable (and therefore the more decorous) is the cloak, the harsher are the relations which it conceals!

Yet, once let some unexpected question — often a most trivial one (the colour of a woman’s hair, a visit, a man’s horses, and so forth) — arise in that family circle, and without any visible cause there will also arise an ever-growing difference,