ed with a superior article
(as some ladies send away five-foot-ten of footman when six-foot comes
to look after the place), and another to lose a vassal for good, like
an unreclaimed hawk, heedless of the lure, clear of the jesses, and
checking, perhaps, at every kind of prey in wilful wanton flight,
down-wind towards the sea.

There is but one chance for a man worsted in these duels _a
l'outrance_, which are fought out with such merciless animosity. It is
to bind up his wounds as best he may, and take himself off to die or
get well in secret. Presently the conqueror finds that a battle only
has been won, and not a territory gained. After the flush of combat
comes a reaction. The triumph seems somewhat tame, ungraced by
presence of the captive. Curiosity wakes up, pity puts in its pleading
word, a certain jealous instinct of appropriation is aroused. Where is
he? What has become of him? I wonder if he ever thinks of me _now_!
Poor fellow! I shouldn't wish to be forgotten altogether, as if we had
never met; and though I didn't want him to like _me_, I never meant
that he was to care for anybody else. Such are the thoughts that chase
each other through the female heart when deprived of sovereignty in
the remotest particular; and it was very much in this way that Lady
Bearwarden, sitting alone in her boudoir, speculated on the present
doings and sentiments of the man who had loved her so well and had
given her up so unwillingly, yet with never a word of reproach, never
a look nor action that could add to her remorse or make her task more
painful.

Alas, she was not happy; even now, when she had gained all she most
wished and schemed for in the world. She felt she was not happy, and
she felt, too, that for Dick to know of her unhappiness would be the
bitterest drop in the bitter cup he had been compelled to drain.

As she looked round her beautiful boudoir, with its blue-satin
hangings, its numerous mirrors, its redundancy of coronets surmounting
her own cipher, twisted and twined into a far more graceful decoration
than the grim heraldic bruin which formed her husband's cognisance,
she said to herself that something was yet required to constitute
a woman's happiness beyond the utmost efforts of the upholder's
art--that even carriages, horses, tall footmen, quantities of flowers,
unlimited credit, and whole packs of cards left on the hall table
every day were mere accessories and superfluities, not the real pith
and sub