the victim will assail them, if they
discover no support in hatred; and no sooner is the spot of softness
touched than they are invaded by hosts of the stricken person's
qualities, which plead to be taken as virtues, and are persuasive. The
executioner did rightly. But it is the turn for the victim to declare
the blow excessive.

Now, a just man, who has overdone the stroke, will indemnify and console
in every way, short of humiliating himself.

He had an unusually clear vision of the scene at Steignton. Surprise and
wrath obscured it at the moment, for reflection to bring it out in sharp
outline; and he was able now to read and translate into inoffensive
English the inherited Spanish of it, which violated nothing of Aminta's
native 'donayre,' though it might look on English soil outlandish or
stagey.

Aminta stood in sunlight on the greensward. She stood hand on hip,
gazing at the house she had so long desired to see, without a notion
that she committed an offence. Implicitly upon all occasions she took
her husband's word for anything he stated, and she did not consequently
imagine him to be at Steignton. So, then, she had no thought of running
down from London to hunt and confound him, as at first it appeared. The
presence of that white-faced Morsfield vindicated her sufficiently so
far. And let that fellow hang till the time for cutting him down! Not
she, but Pagnell, seems to have been the responsible party. And, by the
way, one might prick the affair with Morsfield by telling him publicly
that his visit to inspect Steignton was waste of pains, for he would not
be accepted as a tenant in the kennels, et caetera.

Well, poor girl, she satisfied her curiosity, not aware that a few weeks
farther on would have done it to the full.

As to Morsfield, never once, either in Vienna or in Paris, had she,
warmly admired though she was, all eyes telescoping and sun-glassing
on her, given her husband an hour or half an hour or two minutes of
anxiety. Letters came. The place getting hot, she proposed to leave it.

She had been rather hardly tried. There are flowers we cannot keep
growing in pots. Her fault was, that instead of flinging down her glove
and fighting it out openly, she listened to Pagnell, and began the
game of Pull. If he had a zest for the game, it was to stump the woman
Pagnell. So the veteran fancied in his amended mind.

This intrusive sunlight chased him from the breakfast-table and out of
the house. S