that, he contended, was not the word;
and the word was undiscoverable. Not Cecilia Halkett herself had so
high-bred an air, for Cecilia had not her fineness of feature and full
quick eyes, of which the thin eyelids were part of the expression. And
Cecilia sobbed, snifed, was patched about the face, reddish, bluish. This
girl was pliable only to service, not to grief: she did her work for
three-and-twenty hours, and fell to her sleep of one hour like a soldier.
Lord Romfrey could not recollect anything in a young woman that had taken
him so much as the girl's tossing out of the rug and covering herself,
lying down and going to sleep under his nose, absolutely independent of
his presence.

She had not betrayed any woman's petulance with him for his conduct to
her uncle or guardian. Nor had she hypocritically affected the reverse,
as ductile women do, when they feel wanting in force to do the other. She
was not unlike Nevil's marquise in face, he thought: less foreign of
course; looking thrice as firm. Both were delicately featured.

He had a dream.

It was of an interminable procession of that odd lot called the People.
All of them were quarrelling under a deluge. One party was for umbrellas,
one was against them: and sounding the dispute with a question or two,
Everard held it logical that there should be protection from the wet:
just as logical on the other hand that so frail a shelter should be
discarded, considering the tremendous downpour. But as he himself was
dry, save for two or three drops, he deemed them all lunatics. He
requested them to gag their empty chatter-boxes, and put the mother upon
that child's cry.

He was now a simple unit of the procession. Asking naturally whither they
were going, he saw them point. 'St. Paul's,' he heard. In his own bosom
it was, and striking like the cathedral big bell.

Several ladies addressed him sorrowfully. He stood alone. It had become
notorious that he was to do battle, and no one thought well of his
chances. Devil an enemy to be seen! he muttered. Yet they said the enemy
was close upon him. His right arm was paralyzed. There was the enemy hard
in front, mailed, vizored, gauntleted. He tried to lift his right hand,
and found it grasping an iron ring at the bottom of the deep Steynham
well, sunk one hundred feet through the chalk. But the unexampled cunning
of his left arm was his little secret; and, acting upon this knowledge,
he telegraphed to his first wife at Stey