roze his heart from the marble
of her own.

And because she was for adventuring with her brother at bloody work of
civil war in the pay of a foreign government!--he found a short refuge in
that mute sneer, and was hurled from it by an apparition of the Welsh
scene of the bitten infant, and Carinthia volunteering to do the bloody
work which would have saved it; which he had contested, ridiculed. Right
then, her insanity now conjured the wretched figure of him opposing the
martyr her splendid humaneness had offered her to be, and dominated his
reason, subjected him to admire--on to worship of the woman, whatever she
might do. Just such a feeling for a woman he had dreamed of in his
younger time, doubting that he would ever meet the fleshly woman to
impose it. His heart broke the frost she breathed. Yet, if he gave way to
the run of speech, he knew himself unmanned, and the fatal habit of
superiority stopped his tongue after he had uttered the name he loved to
speak, as nearest to the embrace of her.

'Carinthia--so I think, as I said, we both see the common sense of the
position. I regret over and over again--we'll discuss all that when we
meet after this Calesford affair. I shall have things to say. You will
overlook, I am sure--well, men are men!--or try to. Perhaps I'm not worse
than--we'll say, some. You will, I know,--I have learnt it,--be of great
service, help to me; double my value, I believe; more than double it. You
will receive me--here? Or at Croridge or Esslemont; and alone together,
as now, I beg.'

That was what he said. Having said it, his escape from high tragics in
the comfortable worldly tone rejoiced him; to some extent also the
courteous audience she gave him. And her hand was not refused. Judging by
her aspect, the plain common-sense ground of their situation was accepted
for the best opening step to their union; though she must have had her
feelings beneath it, and God knew that he had! Her hand was friendly. He
could have thanked her for yielding her hand without a stage scene; she
had fine breeding by nature. The gracefullest of trained ladies could not
have passed through such an interview so perfectly in the right key; and
this was the woman he had seen at the wrestle with hideous death to save
a muddy street-child! She touched the gentleman in him. Hard as it was
while he held the hand of the wife, his little son's mother, who might be
called his bride, and drew him by the contact of their bl