no curiosity in the pair of absorbed observers.

Speculations regarding the chances of a fall of rain followed the coach
until it sank and the backs of the two liveried grooms closed the chapter
of the wedding, introductory to the honeymoon at Esslemont, seven miles
distant by road, to the right of Lekkatts. It was out of sight that the
coach turned to the left, Northwestward.

CHAPTER XV

OPENING STAGE OF THE HONEYMOON

A famous maxim in the book of the Old Buccaneer, treating of PRECAUTION,
as 'The brave man's clean conscience,' with sound counsel to the
adventurous, has it:--

'Then you sail away into the tornado, happy as a sealed bottle of ripe
wine.'

It should mean, that brave men entering the jaws of hurricanes are found
to have cheerful hearts in them when they know they have done their best.
But, touching the picture of happiness, conceive the bounteous Bacchic
spirit in the devoutness of a Sophocles, and you find comparison
neighbour closely between the sealed wine-flask and the bride, who is
being driven by her husband to the nest of the unknown on her marriage
morn.

Seated beside him, with bosom at heave and shut mouth, in a strange land,
travelling cloud-like, rushing like the shower-cloud to the vale, this
Carinthia, suddenly wedded, passionately grateful for humbleness exalted,
virginly sensible of treasures of love to give, resembled the inanimate
and most inspiring, was mindless and inexpressive, past memory, beyond
the hopes, a thing of the thrilled blood and skylark air, since she laid
her hand in this young man's. His not speaking to her was accepted. Her
blood rather than recollection revived their exchanges during the dance
at Baden, for assurance that their likings were one, their aims
rapturously one; that he was she, she he, the two hearts making one soul.

Could she give as much as he? It was hardly asked. If we feel we can give
our breath of life, the strength of the feeling fully answers. It bubbles
perpetually from the depth like a well-spring in tumult. Two hearts that
make one soul do not separately count their gifts.

For the rest, her hunger to admire disposed her to an absorbing sentience
of his acts; the trifles, gestures, manner of this and that; which were
seized as they flew, and swiftly assimilated to stamp his personality.
Driving was the piece of skill she could not do. Her husband's mastery of
the reins endowed him with the beauty of those harmonious trotters