wledge that this woman bearing his name designed to be out
at the heels of a foreign army or tag-rag of uniformed rascals, inspired
him to reprobate men's bad old game as heartily as good sense does
in the abstract, and as derisively as it is the way with comfortable
islanders before the midnight trumpet-notes of panic have tumbled them
to their legs. He took his chair; sickened.

He was the next moment taking Carinthia's impression of Chillon,
compelled to it by an admiration that men and women have alike for
shapes of strength in the mould of grace, over whose firm build a
flicker of agility seems to run. For the young soldier's figure was
visibly in its repose prompt to action as the mind's movement. This was
her brother; her enthusiasm for her brother was explained to him.
No sooner did he have the conception of it than it plucked at him
painfully; and, feeling himself physically eclipsed by the object
of Carinthia's enthusiasm, his pride of the rival counselled him to
preserve the mask on what was going on within, lest it should be seen
that he was also morally beaten at the outset. A trained observation
told him, moreover, that her Chillon's correctly handsome features,
despite their conventional urbanity, could knit to smite, and held less
of the reserves of mercy behind them than Carinthia's glorious barbaric
ruggedness. Her eyes, each time she looked at her brother, had, without
doating, the light as of the rise of happy tears to the underlids
as they had on a certain day at the altar, when 'my lord' was 'my
husband,'--more shyly then. He would have said, as beautifully, but for
envy of the frank, pellucid worship in that look on her proved hero. It
was the jewel of all the earth to win back to himself; and it subjected
him, through his desire for it, to a measurement with her idol, in
character, quality, strength, hardness. He heard the couple pronouncing
sentence of his loss by anticipation.

Why had she primed her brother to propose the council of three?
Addressing them separately, he could have been his better or truer self.
The sensation of the check imposed on him was instructive as to her
craft and the direction of her wishes. She preferred the braving of
hazards and horrors beside her brother, in scorn of the advantages he
could offer; and he yearned to her for despising by comparison the
bribe he proposed in the hope that he might win her to him. She was with
religion to let him know the meanness of w