Prominent among what Mr. Fauquier called his "little family" was a
black-eyed lady of great powers of fascination, and considerable local
reputation as a flirt. Nevertheless, these social aberrations were amply
condoned by a facile and complacent husband, who looked with a lenient
and even admiring eye upon the little lady's amusement, and to a certain
extent lent a tacit indorsement to her conduct. Nobody minded Hopkinson;
in the blaze of Mrs. Hopkinson's fascinations he was completely lost
sight of. A few married women with unduly sensitive husbands, and
several single ladies of the best and longest standing, reflected
severely on her conduct. The younger men of course admired her, but I
think she got her chief support from old fogies like ourselves. For it
is your quiet, self-conceited, complacent, philosophic, broad-waisted
paterfamilias who, after all, is the one to whom the gay and giddy of
the proverbially impulsive, unselfish sex owe their place in the social
firmament. We are never inclined to be captious; we laugh at as a
folly what our wives and daughters condemn as a fault; OUR "withers are
unwrung," yet we still confess to the fascinations of a pretty face.
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