night
packet-boat starting for Flushing. The cook, a native of Harwich, sent
up word of a night packet-boat starting at about eleven o'clock last
year.

Lady Charlotte saw the chance as a wind-blown beacon-fire under press
of shades. Changeing her hawkish manner toward the simple pair, she gave
them view of a smile magical by contrast, really beautiful--the smile
she had in reserve for serviceable persons whom she trusted--while
thanking them and saying, that her anxiety concerned Lady Ormont's
welfare.

Her brother had prophesied she would soon be 'running at his wife's
heels,' and so she was, but not 'with her head off,' as she had
rejoined. She might prove, by intercepting his Aminta, that her head was
on. The windy beacon-fire of a chance blazed at the rapid rolling of her
carriage-wheels, and sank to stifling smoke at any petty obstruction.
Let her but come to an interview with his Aminta, she would stop all
that nonsense of the woman's letter; carry her off--and her Weyburn
plucking at her other hand to keep her. Why, naturally, treated as she
was by Rowsley, she dropped soft eyes on a good-looking secretary. Any
woman would--confound the young fellow! But all 's right yet if we get
to Harwich in time; unless... as a certain coldfish finale tone of the
letter playing on the old string, the irrevocable, peculiar to women who
are novices in situations of the kind, appeared to indicate; they see in
their conscience-blasted minds a barrier to a return home, high as the
Archangelical gate behind Mother Eve, and they are down on their knees
blubbering gratitude and repentance if the gate swings open to them. It
is just the instant, granting the catastrophe, to have a woman back to
her duty. She has only to learn she has a magnanimous husband. If she
learns into the bargain how he suffers, how he loves her,--well,
she despises a man like that Lawrence Finchley all the more for the
'magnanimity' she has the profit of, and perceives to be feebleness. But
there 's woman in her good and her bad; she'll trick a man of age, and
if he forgives her, owning his own faults in the case, she won't scorn
him for it; the likelihood is, she 'll feel bound in honour to serve him
faithfully for the rest of their wedded days.

A sketch to her of Rowsley's deep love.... Lady Charlotte wandered into
an amazement at it. A sentence of her brother's recent speaking danced
in her recollection. He said of his country: That Lout comes to a
k