play on their sex, and are for ever
acting according to the feminine standard:--a dangerous stretch of
contempt for one less strong than she.

Riding behind her and Temple one day with the princess, I said, 'What
takes you most in Janet?'

She replied, 'Her courage. And it is of a kind that may knot up
every other virtue worth having. I have impulses, and am capable of
desperation, but I have no true courage: so I envy and admire, even if
I have to blame her; for I know that this possession of hers, which
identifies her and marks her from the rest of us, would bear the ordeal
of fire. I can imagine the qualities I have most pride in withering and
decaying under a prolonged trial. I cannot conceive her courage failing.
Perhaps because I have it not myself I think it the rarest of precious
gifts. It seems to me to imply one half, and to dispense with the
other.'

I have lived to think that Ottilia was right. As nearly right, too,
in the wording of her opinion as one may be in three or four sentences
designed to be comprehensive.

My Janet's readiness to meet calamity was shown ere we reached home upon
an evening of the late autumn, and set eye on a scene, for her the very
saddest that could have been devised to test her spirit of endurance,
when, driving up the higher heath-land, we saw the dark sky ominously
reddened over Riversley, and, mounting the ridge, had the funeral
flames of the old Grange dashed in our faces. The blow was evil,
sudden, unaccountable. Villagers, tenants, farm-labourers, groups of a
deputation that had gone to the railway station to give us welcome;
and returned, owing to a delay in our arrival, stood gazing from all
quarters. The Grange was burning in two great wings, that soared in
flame-tips and columns of crimson smoke, leaving the central hall and
chambers untouched as yet, but alive inside with mysterious ranges of
lights, now curtained, now made bare--a feeble contrast to the
savage blaze to right and left, save for the wonder aroused as to its
significance. These were soon cloaked. Dead sable reigned in them, and
at once a jet of flame gave the whole vast building to destruction. My
wife thrust her hand in mine. Fire at the heart, fire at the wings--our
old home stood in that majesty of horror which freezes the limbs of men,
bidding them look and no more.

'What has Riversley done to deserve this?' I heard Janet murmur to
herself. 'His room!' she said, when at the South-east wing, wh