t
day, to announce his term of service to the earl, whom he had said
he much wanted to see. He said it in his sharp manner when there was
decision behind it. Several times after contemplating the end of her
journey, and not perceiving any spot of pleasure ahead, an emotion urged
her to turn back; for the young are acutely reasoning when their breasts
advise them to quit a road where no pleasure beckons.

Unlike Matthew Weyburn, the tiptoe sparkle of a happy mind did not leap
from her at wayside scenes, a sweep of grass, distant hills, clouds
in flight. She required, since she suffered, the positive of events or
blessings to kindle her glow.

Matthew Weyburn might call at the house. Would he be disappointed? He
had preserved her letters of the old school-days. She had burnt his. But
she had not burnt the letters of Mr. Morsfield; and she cared nothing
for that man. Assuredly she merited the stigma branding women as
crack-brained. Yet she was not one of the fools; she could govern a
household, and she liked work, she had the capacity for devotedness. So,
therefore, she was a woman perverted by her position, and she shook her
bonds in revolt from marriage. Imagining a fall down some suddenly spied
chasm of her nature, she had a sisterly feeling for the women named
sinful. At the same time, reflecting that they are sinful only with the
sinful, she knelt thankfully at the feet of the man who had saved her
from such danger. Tears threatened. They were a poor atonement for the
burning of his younger letters. But not he--she was the sufferer, and
she whipped up a sensation of wincing at the flames they fell to, and
at their void of existence, committing sentimental idiocies worthy of
a lovesick girl, consciously to escape the ominous thought, which her
woman's perception had sown in her, that he too chafed at a marriage no
marriage: was true in fidelity, not true through infidelity, as she had
come to be. The thought implied misery for both. She entered a black
desolation, with the prayer that he might not be involved, for his
own sake: partly also on behalf of the sustaining picture the young
schoolmaster at his task, merry among his dear boys, to trim and point
them body and mind for their business in the world, painted for her a
weariful prospect of the life she must henceforth drag along.

Is a woman of the plain wits common to numbers ever deceived in her
perception of a man's feelings for her? Let her first question her