mean well, I am sure. Let us wait. I shall sleep,
perhaps, if I go to bed early. I dare say I am spiritless--not worth
more than I get. I gave him the lead altogether; he keeps it. In
everything else he is kind; I have all the luxuries--enough to loathe
them. Kiss me and say good night."

Aminta made it imperative by rising. Her aunt stood up, kissed, and
exclaimed, "I tell you you are a queenly creature, not to be treated as
any puny trollop of a handmaid. And although he is a great nobleman, he
is not to presume to behave any longer, my dear, as if your family had
no claim on his consideration. My husband, Alfred Pagnell, would have
laid that before him pretty quick. You are the child of the Farrells and
the Solers, both old families; on your father's side you are linked
with the oldest nobility in Europe. It flushes one to think of it!
Your grandmother, marrying Captain Algernon Farrell, was the legitimate
daughter of a Grandee of Spain; as I have told Lord Ormont often, and
I defy him to equal that for a romantic marriage in the annals of his
house, or boast of bluer blood. Again, the Solers--"

"We take the Solers for granted, aunty, good night."

"Commoners, if you like; but established since the Conquest. That is, we
trace the pedigree. And to be treated, even by a great nobleman, as if
we were stuff picked up out of the ditch! I declare, there are times
when I sit and think and boil. Is it chivalrous, is it generous--is it,
I say, decent--is it what Alfred would have called a fair fulfilment
of a pact, for your wedded husband--? You may close my mouth! But he
pretends to be chivalrous and generous, and he has won a queen any
wealthy gentleman in England--I know of one, if not two--would be proud
to have beside him in equal state; and what is he to her? He is an
extinguisher. Or is it the very meanest miserliness, that he may keep
you all to himself? There we are again! I say he is an unreadable
sphinx."

Aminta had rung the bell for her maid. Mrs. Pagnell could be counted on
for drawing in her tongue when the domestics were near.

A languor past delivery in sighs was on the young woman's breast. She
could have heard without a regret that the heart was to cease beating.
Had it been downright misery she would have looked about her with less
of her exanimate glassiness. The unhappy have a form of life: until they
are worn out, they feel keenly. She felt nothing. The blow to her pride
of station and womanhood s