han she had
suffered from the proposal of quarters in Cadiz. And now her husband had
money?... she suggested his reinstatement in the English army. Chillon
hushed that: his chief had his word. Besides, he wanted schooling in
war. Why had he married! His love for her was the answer; and her beauty
argued for the love. But possessing her, he was bound to win her a
name. So his reasoning ran to an accord with his military instincts and
ambition. Nevertheless, the mournful strange fact she recalled, that
they had never waltzed together since they were made one, troubled his
countenance in the mirror of hers. Instead of the waltz, grief, low
worries, dulness, an eclipse of her, had been the beautiful creature's
portion.

It established mighty claims to a young husband's indulgence. She
hummed a few bars of his favourite old Viennese waltz, with 'Chillon!'
invitingly and reproachfully. His loathing of Lord Fleetwood had to
withstand an envious jump at the legs in his vison of her partner on the
morrow. He said: 'You'll think of some one absent.'

'You really do wish me to go, my darling? It is Chillon's wish?' She
begged for the words; she had them, and then her feverishness abated to
a simple sparkling composure.

Carinthia had observed her. She was heart-sick under pressure of
thoughts the heavier for being formless. They signified in the sum her
doom to see her brother leave England for the war, and herself crumble
to pieces from the imagined figure of herself beside him on or near the
field. They could not be phrased, for they accused the beloved brother
of a weakness in the excessive sense of obligation to the beautiful
woman who had wedded him. Driving down to Southampton by the
night-coach, her tenderness toward Henrietta held other thoughts
unshaped, except one, that moved in its twilight, murmuring of how the
love of pleasure keeps us blind children. And how the innocents are
pushed by it to snap at wicked bait, which the wealthy angle with,
pointed a charitable index on some of our social story. The Countess
Livia, not an innocent like Henrietta had escaped the poisoned tongues
by contracting a third marriage--'in time!' Lady Arpington said; and
the knotty question was presented to a young mind: Why are the innocents
tempted to their ruin, and the darker natures allowed an escape? Any
street-boy could have told her of the virtue in quick wits. But her
unexercised reflectiveness was on the highroad of accepted doc