"But, even so far as his foolish passion was concerned, it seems to me that your father acted very unwisely in introducing this woman into his house."
"And you would be still more at a loss to understand his conduct if you had but known the extreme formality and circumspection of his character. Nothing could ever have induced him thus to trample under foot all the established rules of society but the unbounded influence of Madame Roland,—an influence she exercised with so much the more certainty as she veiled her designs under the mask of the most passionate love for him."
"But what was your father's age then?"
"About sixty."
"And he really credited the professions of love made by so much younger a woman?"
"My father had been in his time one of the most fashionable and admired men of
