His tone stung her pride, but his words touched her heart.
Her passion was always short-lived, and no evil spirit possessed her
long. She rebelled against the first part of his speech with all her
might, but she softened to the last. She came up to him with her hands
out.

"I had no right to speak so impatiently to you. God knows, to make your
life happy will be my only thought, and care, and wish. If I spoke
angrily, forgive me!"

Earlscourt knew that the nature so quick to acknowledge error was worth
fifty unerring and unruffled ones; still he sighed as he answered her,--

"My dear child, I forgive you. But, Beatrice, there is no foe to love so
sure and deadly as dissension!" And as he drew her to him and felt her
soft warm lips on his, he thought, half uneasily yet, "She has never
told me who annoyed her--never mentioned her companion in the anteroom
last night."

Lady Clive had her wish; the thorn festered as promisingly as she could
have desired. Ce n'est que le premier pas qui coute in quarrels as in
all else. Dispute once, you are very sure to dispute again, whether with
the man you hate or the woman you love.

III.

HOW PRIDE SOWED AND REAPED.

It only wanted three weeks to Beatrice Boville's marriage. We were all
to leave Lemongenseidlitz together in a fortnight's time for old Lady
Mechlin's house in Berks, where the ceremony was to take place.

"Earlscourt is quite infatuated," said Lady Clive to me one evening.
"Beatrice is very charming, of course, but she is not at all suited to
him, she is so fiery, so impetuous, so self-reliant."

"I think you are mistaken," said I. I admired Beatrice Boville--comme je
vous ai dit--and I didn't like our family's snaps and snarls at her.
"She may be impetuous, but, as her impulses are always generous, that
doesn't matter much. She is only fiery at injustice, and, for myself, I
prefer a woman who can stand up for her own rights and her friends' to
one who'll sit by in--you'll call it meekness, I suppose? I call it
cowardice and hypocrisy--to hear herself or them abused."

"Thank you, mon ami," said Beatrice's voice at my elbow, as Lady Clive
rose and crossed the room. "I am much obliged for your defence; I
couldn't help hearing it as I stood in the balcony, and I wish very much
I deserved it. I am afraid, though, I cannot dispute Helena's verdict of
'fiery,' 'impetuous,'--"

"And self-reliant?" I asked her. She laughed softly, and her eyes
unconscious