As innocent as a baby a novel Author:Unknown Author Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. MR. ANDREWS'S FATUITY. 0 you think Mrs. Lovel's character improves, and that she is going to turn out a nice, kind, sympathetic old lady ... more »after all ? It is certainly very agreeable to find her sympathizing with her niece, whose love she has been so dead against ever since the pretty inspiration first possessed the child; but how much of this sympathy is due to her nerves, and how much to her heart ? That's the question. Impulse comes from thenerves, and is impulse to be depended on ? Impulse is like the gas that remains in the pipe after the meter is turned off. You think the meter turned on ; you strike a- match, apply it, and out whips a brilliant flame. How gay and kindly the room looks ! how cheerful everything 1 But see, the flame dwindles, dwindles : nothing left presently but a spot of blue : all is darkness around. Where be your eyes now, Yorick ? Certainly for one week at least after Grahame had left Sandhaven, Jessie's grief was sharp enough to keep Mrs. Level's sympathy in full blaze. To be sure this doesn't say much for the old lady's good sense, and nothing is more intelligible than the sneer that Lady Dun- dizzy, who has six daughters, four of whom are married to aged men of distinction andproperty, levels at Jessie's aunt. But Mrs. Lovel having lived all her life in the country, was unavoidably possessed of a bucolic simplicity of soul, as certain insects take their colour from the leaves they feed on. She disliked marriage and love-making as matters of fact; but her dislike did not prevent her from taking the most innocent views of them. For instance, she never could have agreed with Lady Dundizzy that marriage was simply a lawyer's contrivance to enable women to spend men's, money, and ride in men's carriages, without obliging society to ...« less