mmon understanding. They constitute, in the sum of them,
the self-examination, whence issues, acknowledged or not, a belated
self-knowledge, to direct our final actions. She had the heart. Sight
of the high-minded, proud, speechless man suffering for the absence of
a runaway woman, not ceasing to suffer, never blaming the woman, and
consequently, it could be fancied, blaming himself, broke down Lady
Charlotte's defences and moved her to review her part in her brother
Rowsley's unhappiness. For supposing him to blame himself, her power
to cast a shadow of blame on him went from her, and therewith her
vindication of her conduct. He lived at Olmer. She read him by degrees,
as those who have become absolutely tongueless have to be read; and so
she gathered that this mortally (or lastingly) wounded brother of hers
was pleased by an allusion to his Aminta. He ran his finger on the lines
of a map of Spain, from Barcelona over to Granada; and impressed his
nail at a point appearing to be mountainous or woody. Lady Charlotte
suggested that he and his Aminta had passed by there. He told a story of
a carriage accident: added, 'She was very brave.' One day, when he had
taken a keepsake book of England's Beauties off the drawing-room table,
his eyes dwelt on a face awhile, and he handed it, with a nod, followed
by a slight depreciatory shrug. 'Like her, not so handsome,' Lady
Charlotte said.

He nodded again. She came to a knowledge of Aminta's favourite colours
through the dwelling of his look on orange and black, deepest rose,
light yellow, light blue. Her grand-daughters won the satisfied look
if they wore a combination touching his memory. The rocky are not
imaginative, and have to be struck from without for a kindling of them.
Submissive though she was to court and soothe her brother Rowsley, a
spur of jealousy burned in the composition of her sentiments, to set
her going. He liked visiting Mrs. Lawrence Finchley at her effaced good
man's country seat, Brockholm in Berkshire, and would stay there a month
at a time. Lady Charlotte learnt why. The enthusiast for Aminta, without
upholding her to her late lord, whom she liked well, talked of her
openly with him, confessed to a fondness for her. How much Mrs. Lawrence
ventured to say, Lady Charlotte could not know. But rivalry pushed her
to the extreme of making Aminta partially a topic; and so ready was
he to follow her lead in the veriest trifles recalling the handsome
runaway; th