n. It was queer that Sit Twickenham should be at
the seaside, instead of at Brookfield, wooing; but a man's physical
condition should be an excuse for any intermission of attentions. "Now
that I know him better," wrote Adela, "I think him the pink of chivalry;
and of this I am sure I can convince you, Bella, C. will be blessed
indeed; for a delicate nature in a man of the world is a treasure. He
has a beautiful little vessel of his own sailing beside us."

Arabella was critic enough to smile at this last. On the whole she
was passably content for the moment, in a severe fashion, save to feel
herself the dreadful lying engine and fruitlessly abject person that she
had become.

We imagine that when souls have had a fall, they immediately look up
and contrast their present with their preceding position. This does not
occur. The lower their fall, the less, generally, their despair, for
despair is a business of the Will, and when they come heavily upon their
humanity, they get something of the practical seriousness of nature. If
they fall very low, the shock and the sense that they are still on
their feet make them singularly earnest to set about the plain plan of
existence--getting air for their lungs and elbow-room. Contrast, that
mother of melancholy, comes when they are some way advanced upon the
upward scale. The Poles did not look up to their lost height, but merely
exerted their faculties to go forward; and great as their ambition had
been in them, now that it was suddenly blown to pieces, they did not sit
and weep, but strove in a stunned way to work ahead. The truth is, that
we rarely indulge in melancholy until we can take it as a luxury: little
people never do, and they, when we have not put them on their guard, are
humankind naked.

The yachting excursions were depicted vividly by Adela, and were
addressed as a sort of reproach to the lugubrious letters of her sister.
She said pointedly once: "Really, if we are to be miserable, I turn
Catholic and go into a convent." The strange thing was that Arabella
imagined her letters to be rather of a cheerful character. She related
the daily events at Brookfield:--the change in her father's soups,
and his remarks on them, and which he preferred; his fight with his
medicine, and declaration that he was as sound as any man on shore; the
health of the servants; Mr. Marter the curate's call with a Gregorian
chant; doubts of his orthodoxy; Cornelia's lonely walks and singular