In my mind's eye, Horatio.
Prue and I do not entertain much; our means forbid it. In truth, other people entertain for us. We enjoy that hospitality of which no account is made. We see the show, and hear the music, and smell the flowers of great festivities, tasting as it were the drippings from rich dishes.

Our own dinner service is remarkably plain, our dinners, even on state
occasions, are strictly in keeping, and almost our only guest is
Titbottom. I buy a handful of roses as I come up from office,
perhaps, and Prue arranges them so prettily in a glass dish for the
centre of table that even when I have hurried out to see Aurelia
step into her carriage to go out to dine, I have thought that the
bouquet she carried was not more beautiful because it was more costly.
I grant that it was more harmonious with her superb beauty and her
rich attire. And I have no doubt that if Aurelia knew the old man,
whom she must have seen so often watching her, and his wife, who
ornaments her sex with as much sweetness, although with less splendor,
than Aurelia herself, she would also acknowledge that the nosegay of
roses was as fine and fit upon their table as her own sumptuous
bouquet is for herself. I have that faith in perception of that
lovely lady. It is at least my habit--I hope I may say, my nature, to
believe the best of people, rather than the worst. If I thought that
all this sparkling setting of beauty--this fine fashion--these blazing
jewels and lustrous silks and airy gauzes, embellished with
gold-threaded embroidery and wrought in a thousand exquisite
elaborations, so that I cannot see one of those lovely girls pass me
by without thanking God for the vision--if I thought that this was
all, and that underneath her lace flounces and diamond bracelets
Aurelia was a sullen, selfish woman, then I should turn sadly
homewards, for I should see that her jewels were flashing scorn upon
the object they adorned, and that her laces were of a more exquisite
loveliness than woman whom they merely touched with a superficial
grace. It would be like a gaily decorated mausoleum--bright to see,
but silent and dark within.
"Great excellences, my dear Prue," I sometimes allow myself to say,
"lie concealed in the depths of character, like pearls at the bottom
of the sea. Under the laughing, glancing surface, how little they are
suspected! Perhaps love is nothing else than the sight of them by one
person. Hence every man's mistress is apt to be an enigma to everybody
else. I have no doubt that when Aurelia is engaged, people will say
that she is