d
dress. She was of the women whose wits are quick in everything they do.
That which was proper to her position, complexion, and the hour, surely
marked her appearance. Unaccountably this night, the fair fleshly
presence over-weighted her intellectual distinction, to an observer bent
on vindicating her innocence. Or rather, he saw the hidden in the
visible.

Owner of such a woman, and to lose her! Redworth pitied the husband.

The crackling flames reddened her whole person. Gazing, he remembered
Lady Dunstane saying of her once, that in anger she had the nostrils of a
war-horse. The nostrils now were faintly alive under some sensitive
impression of her musings. The olive cheeks, pale as she stood in the
doorway, were flushed by the fire-beams, though no longer with their
swarthy central rose, tropic flower of a pure and abounding blood, as it
had seemed. She was now beset by battle. His pity for her, and his eager
championship, overwhelmed the spirit of compassion for the foolish
wretched husband. Dolt, the man must be, Redworth thought; and he asked
inwardly, Did the miserable tyrant suppose of a woman like this, that she
would be content to shine as a candle in a grated lanthorn? The
generosity of men speculating upon other men's possessions is known. Yet
the man who loves a woman has to the full the husband's jealousy of her
good name. And a lover, that without the claims of the alliance, can be
wounded on her behalf, is less distracted in his homage by the personal
luminary, to which man's manufacture of balm and incense is mainly drawn
when his love is wounded. That contemplation of her incomparable beauty,
with the multitude of his ideas fluttering round it, did somewhat shake
the personal luminary in Redworth. He was conscious of pangs. The
question bit him: How far had she been indiscreet or wilful? and the bite
of it was a keen acid to his nerves. A woman doubted by her husband, is
always, and even to her champions in the first hours of the noxious
rumour, until they had solidified in confidence through service, a
creature of the wilds, marked for our ancient running. Nay, more than a
cynical world, these latter will be sensible of it. The doubt casts her
forth, the general yelp drags her down; she runs like the prey of the
forest under spotting branches; clear if we can think so, but it has to
be thought in devotedness: her character is abroad. Redworth bore a
strong resemblance to, his fellowmen, except for