'Surely your ladyship must know some persons whose very countenances
prove that they have found a reality at the heart of life.'

'Yes. But none whose judgment I could trust. I cannot tell how soon they
may find reason to change their minds on the subject. Their satisfaction
may only be that they have not tried to rub the varnish off the gilding
so much as I, and therefore the gilding itself still shines a little in
their eyes.'

'If it be only gilding, it is better it should be rubbed off.'

'But I am unwilling to think it is. I am not willing to sign a bond of
farewell to hope. Life seemed good once. It is bad enough that it seems
such no longer, without consenting that it must and shall be so. Allow
me to add, for my own sake, that I speak from the bitterness of no
chagrin. I have had all I ever cared--or condescended to wish for. I
never had anything worth the name of a disappointment in my life.'

'I cannot congratulate you upon that,' said Falconer, seriously. 'But
if there be a truth or a heart in life, assurance of the fact can only
spring from harmony with that truth. It is not to be known save by
absolute contact with it; and the sole guide in the direction of it must
be duty: I can imagine no other possible conductor. We must do before we
can know.'

'Yes, yes,' replied Lady Georgina, hastily, in a tone that implied, 'Of
course, of course: we know all about that.' But aware at once, with the
fine instinct belonging to her mental organization, that she was
thus shutting the door against all further communication, she added
instantly: 'But what is one's duty? There is the question.'

'The thing that lies next you, of course. You are, and must remain, the
sole judge of that. Another cannot help you.'

'But that is just what I do not know.'

I interrupt Lady Georgina to remark--for I too have been a pupil of
Falconer--that I believe she must have suspected what her duty was, and
would not look firmly at her own suspicion. She added:

'I want direction.'

But the same moment she proceeded to indicate the direction in which she
wanted to be directed; for she went on:

'You know that now-a-days there are so many modes in which to employ
one's time and money that one does not know which to choose. The lower
strata of society, you know, Mr. Falconer--so many channels! I want the
advice of a man of experience, as to the best investment, if I may use
the expression: I do not mean of money only, but of time