ble to the skies, where it became
a spheral realm, of far too fine an atmosphere for men to breathe in it;
and thither she transported herself at will, whenever the contrast, with
its accompanying menace of a tyrannic subjugation, overshadowed her. In
the above, the kingdom composed of her shattered romance of life and her
present aspirings, she was free and safe. Nothing touched her
there--nothing that Redworth did. She could not have admitted there her
ideal of a hero. It was the sublimation of a virgin's conception of life,
better fortified against the enemy. She peopled it with souls of the
great and pure, gave it illimitable horizons, dreamy nooks, ravishing
landscapes, melodies of the poets of music. Higher and more-celestial
than the Salvatore, it was likewise, now she could assure herself
serenely, independent of the horrid blood-emotions. Living up there, she
had not a feeling.

The natural result of this habit of ascending to a superlunary home, was
the loss of an exact sense of how she was behaving below. At the
Berkshire mansion, she wore a supercilious air, almost as icy as she
accused the place of being. Emma knew she must have seen in the library a
row of her literary ventures, exquisitely bound; but there was no
allusion to the books. Mary Paynham's portrait of Mrs. Warwick hung
staring over the fireplace, and was criticized, as though its occupancy
of that position had no significance.

'He thinks she has a streak of genius,' Diana said to Emma.

'It may be shown in time,' Emma replied, for a comment on the work. 'He
should know, for the Spanish pictures are noble acquisitions.'

'They are, doubtless, good investments.'

He had been foolish enough to say, in Diana's hearing, that he considered
the purchase of the Berkshire estate a good investment. It had not yet a
name. She suggested various titles for Emma to propose: 'The Funds'; or
'Capital Towers'; or 'Dividend Manor'; or 'Railholm'; blind to the
evidence of inflicting pain. Emma, from what she had guess concerning the
purchaser of The Crossways, apprehended a discovery there which might
make Tony's treatment of him unkinder, seeing that she appeared actuated
contrariously; and only her invalid's new happiness in the small
excursions she was capable of taking to a definite spot, of some homely
attractiveness, moved her to follow her own proposal for the journey.
Diana pleaded urgently, childishly in tone, to have Arthur Rhodes with
them, 'so a