ould not draw the hearts out
of men in England, as in Italy and in Spain. Aminta had got thus far when
she found 'Queen of Brunes' expunged by a mist: she imagined hearing the
secretary's laugh. She thought he was right to laugh at her. She retorted
simply: 'These are feelings that are poetry.'

A man may know nothing about them, and be an excellent schoolmaster.

Suggestions touching the prudence of taking Mrs. Lawrence into her
confidence, as regarded these troublesome letters of the man with the
dart in his breast, were shuffled aside for various reasons: her modesty
shrank; and a sense of honour toward the man forbade it. She would have
found it easier to do if she had conspired against her heart in doing it.
And yet, cold-bloodedly to expose him and pluck the clothing from a
passion--dear to think of only when it is profoundly secret--struck her
as an extreme baseness, of which not even the woman who perused and
reperused his letters could be guilty.

Her head rang with some of the lines, and she accused her head of the
crime of childishness, seeing that her heart was not an accomplice. At
the same time, her heart cried out violently against the business of a
visit to Lady de Culme, and all the steps it involved. Justly she accused
her heart of treason. Heart and head were severed. This, as she partly
apprehended, is the state of the woman who is already on the slope of her
nature's mine-shaft, dreading the rush downwards, powerless to break away
from the light.

Letters perused and reperused, coming from a man never fervently noticed
in person, conjure features one would wish to put beside the actual, to
make sure that the fiery lines he writes are not practising a
beguilement. Aminta had lost grasp of the semblance of the impassioned
man. She just remembered enough of his eyes to think there might be
healing in a sight of him.

Latterly she had refused to be exhibited to a tattling world as the great
nobleman's conquest:--The 'Beautiful Lady Doubtful' of a report that had
scorched her cars. Theatres, rides, pleasure-drives, even such houses as
she saw standing open to her had been shunned. Now she asked the earl to
ride in the park.

He complied, and sent to the stables immediately, just noted another of
her veerings. The whimsy creatures we are matched to contrast with, shift
as the very winds or feather-grasses in the wind. Possibly a fine day did
it. Possibly, too, her not being requested to do it.

He