a
battle-horse and a cushioned-chair; between companionship with her
glorious brother facing death, and submission to a weak young nobleman
claiming his husband's rights over her. She had submitted, had forgotten
his icy strangeness, had thought him love; and hers was a breast for
love, it was owned by the sobbing rise of her breast at the thought. And
she might submit again--in honour? scorning the husband? Chillon scorned
him. Yet Chillon left the decision to her, specified his excuses.
And Henrietta and Owain, Lady Arpington, Gower Woodseer, all the
world--Carinthia shuddered at the world's blank eye on what it directs
for the acquiescence of the woman. That shred of herself she would
become, she felt herself becoming it when the view of her career beside
her brother waned. The dead Rebecca living in her heart was the only
soul among her friends whose voice was her own against the world's.

But there came a turn where she and Rebecca separated. Rebecca's
insurgent wishes taking shape of prophecy, robbed her of her friend
Owain, to present her an impossible object, that her mind could not
compass or figure. She bade Rebecca rest and let her keep the fancy
of Owain as her good ghost of a sun in the mist of a frosty morning;
sweeter to her than an image of love, though it were the very love,
the love of maidens' dreams, bursting the bud of romance, issuing its
flower. Delusive love drove away with a credulous maiden, under an
English heaven, on a coach and four, from a windy hill-top, to a crash
below, and a stunned recovery in the street of small shops, mud, rain,
gloom, language like musket-fire and the wailing wounded.

No regrets, her father had said; they unman the heart we want for
to-morrow. She kept her look forward at the dead wall Chillon had thrown
up. He did not reject her company; his prospect of it had clouded; and
there were allusions to Henrietta's loneliness. 'His Carin could do her
service by staying, if she decided that way.' Her enthusiasm dropped to
the level of life's common ground. With her sustainment gone, she beheld
herself a titled doll, and had sternly to shut her eyes on the behind
scenes, bar any shadowy approaches of womanly softness; thinking her
father's daughter dishonoured in the submissive wife of the weak young
nobleman Chillon despised as below the title of man.

Madge and Gower came to Stoneridge on their road to London three days
before their union. Madge had no fear of Ines, b