tand
her character, and to see that, though she was his darling and
plaything, she was also a passionate, ardent, proud-spirited woman,
stung by injustice and impatient of doubt. No two people could be more
fitted to make each other's happiness, yet it struck me that it was just
possible they might make each other's misery very completely, through
want of comprehension on the one side, through want of explanation on
the other.

"Your marriage is fixed, isn't it, Earlscourt?" asked his sister, Lady
Clive Edghill, who had come to Lemongenseidlitz, and, though compelled
by him, as he compelled all the rest of the family, to show Beatrice
strict courtesy, disliked her, because she was not an advantageous
match, was much too young in their opinion, and had no money--the
gravest crimes a woman can have in the eyes of any man's relatives.
"The 14th! Indeed! yours is a very short engagement!"

"Is there any reason why it should be longer?"

"O, dear, no! none that I am aware of. I wish, earnestly, my dear
Earlscourt, I could congratulate you more warmly; but I can never say
what I do not feel, and I had so much hoped--"

"My dear Helena, as long as I have so much reason to congratulate
myself, it matters very little whether you do or do not," smiled
Earlscourt. He was too much of a lion to be stung by gnats.

"I dare say. I sincerely trust you may ever have reason. But I heard
some very disagreeable things about that Mr. Boville, Beatrice's father.
Do you know that he was in a West India regiment, but was deprived of
his commission even there?--a perfect blackleg and sharper, I
understand. I suppose she has never mentioned him to you?"

"You are very much mistaken; all that Beatrice knows of him, I know;
that is but little, for Lady Mechlin took her long ago, when her mother
died, from such unfit guardianship. Beatrice is as open as the day--"

"Indeed! A little too frank, perhaps?"

"Too frank? That is a paradox. No one can have too much candor. It is
not a virtue of your sex, but it is one, thank God! which she possesses
in a rare degree, though possibly it gains her enemies where it should
gain her friends."

"Still frankness _may_ merge into indiscretion," said Helena, musingly.

"I doubt it. An indiscreet woman is never frank, for she has always the
memory of silly things said and done which require concealment."

"I was merely thinking," Helena went on, regardless of a speech which
she did not perhaps relish,