iance with the man while her brother's life was
imperilled? Carinthia rebuked her drowsy head for not having seen his
reason for refusing at the time. 'How long I am before I see anything
that does not stare in my face!' She was a married woman, whose order of
mind rendered her singularly subject to the holiness of the tie; and she
was a weak woman, she feared. Already, at intervals, now that action on
a foreign field of the thunders and lightnings was denied, imagination
revealed her dissolving to the union with her husband, and cried her
comment on herself as the world's basest of women for submitting to it
while Chillon's life ran risks; until finally she said: 'Not before I
have my brother home safe!' an exclamation equal to a vow.

That being settled, some appearance of equanimity returned; she
talked of the scarlet business as one she participated in as a distant
spectator. Chillon's chief was hurrying the embarkation of his troops;
within ten days the whole expedition would be afloat. She was to post to
London for further purchases, he following to take leave of his wife and
babe. Curiously, but hardly remarked on during the bustle of work,
Livia had been the one to send her short account of the great day at
Calesford; Henrietta, the born correspondent, pencilling a couple of
lines; she was well, dreadfully fatigued, rather a fright from a trip
of her foot and fall over a low wire fence. Her message of love thrice
underlined the repeated word.

Henrietta was the last person Carinthia would have expected to meet
midway on the London road. Her name was called from a carriage as she
drove up to the door of the Winchester hostlery, and in the lady, over
whose right eye and cheek a covering fold of silk concealed a bandage,
the voice was her sister Riette's. With her were two babes and their
nursemaids.

'Chillon is down there--you have left him there?' Henrietta greeted
her, saw the reply, and stepped out of her carriage. 'You shall kiss the
children afterwards; come into one of the rooms, Janey.'

Alone together, before an embrace, she said, in the voice of tears
hardening to the world's business, 'Chillon must not enter London. You
see the figure I am. My character's in as bad case up there--thanks to
those men! My husband has lost his "golden Riette." When you see beneath
the bandage! He will have the right to put me away. His "beauty of
beauties"! I'm fit only to dress as a page-boy and run at his heels.
My h