lf of a man
she would have held mean--she would have plucked it from her bosom at
once. She was simply envious of those who in the face of death could say,
"I have lived." Pride, and the absence of any power of self-inspection,
kept her blind to her disease. No recollection gave her boy save of the
hours in the hunting-field. There she led gallantly; but it was not
because of leading that she exulted. There the quick blood struck on her
brain like wine, and she seemed for a time to have some one among the
crowns of life. An object--who cared how small?--was ahead: a poor old
fox trying to save his brush; and Charlotte would have it if the master
of cunning did not beat her. "It's my natural thirst for blood," she
said. She did not laugh as she thought now and then that the old red
brush dragging over grey dews toward a yellow yolk in the curdled
winter-morning sky, was the single thing that could make her heart throb.

Brookfield was supported in its trial by the discomfiture of the Tinleys.
These girls, with their brother, had evidently plotted to 'draw out' Mrs.
Chump. They had asked concerning her, severally; and hearing that she had
not returned from town, had each shown a blank face, or had been doubtful
of the next syllable. Of Wilfrid, Emilia, and Mr. Pole, question and
answer were interchanged. "Wilfrid will come in a few minutes. Miss
Belloni, you know, is preparing for Italy. Papa? Papa, I really do fear
will not be able to join us." Such was Brookfield's concerted form of
reply. The use of it, together with the gaiety of dancing blood, gave
Adela (who believed that she ought to be weeping, and could have wept
easily) strange twitches of what I would ask permission to call the
juvenile 'shrug-philosophy.' As thus: 'What creatures we are, but life is
so!' And again, 'Is not merriment dreadful when a duty!' She was as
miserable as she could be but not knowing that youth furnished a plea
available, the girl was ashamed of being cheerful at all. Edward Burley's
sketch of Mr. Pericles scattering his band, sent her into muffled screams
of laughter; for which she did internal penance so bitter that, for her
to be able to go on at all, the shrug-philosophy was positively
necessary; Mr. Pericles himself saw the sketch, and remarked critically,
"It is zat I have more hair:" following which, he tapped the signal for
an overture to commence, and at the first stroke took a run, with his
elbows clapping exactly as the shrewd