their sconces cracked, and all run jabbering of
the irony of Fate, to escape the annoyance of tracing the causes. And
what are they? nine times out of ten, plain want of patience, or some
debt for indulgence. There's a subject:--let some one write, Fables
in illustration of the irony of Fate: and I'll undertake to tack-on my
grandmother's maxims for a moral to teach of 'em. We prate of that irony
when we slink away from the lesson--the rod we conjure. And you to
talk of Fate! It's the seed we sow, individually or collectively. I'm
bound-up in the prosperity of the country, and if the ship is wrecked,
it ruins my fortune, but not me, unless I'm bound-up in myself. At least
I hope that's my case.'

He apologized for intruding Mr. Thomas Redworth.

His hearer looked at him, thinking he required a more finely pointed
gift of speech for the ironical tongue, but relishing the tonic
directness of his faculty of reason while she considered that the
application of the phrase might be brought home to him so as to render
'my Grandmother's moral' a conclusion less comfortingly, if quite
intelligibly, summary. And then she thought of Tony's piteous instance;
and thinking with her heart, the tears insisted on that bitter irony of
the heavens, which bestowed the long-withheld and coveted boon when it
was empty of value or was but as a handful of spices to a shroud.

Perceiving the moisture in her look, Redworth understood that it was
foolish to talk rationally. But on her return to her beloved, the real
quality of the man had overcome her opposing state of sentiment, and
she spoke of him with an iteration and throb in the voice that set a
singular query whirring round Diana's ears. Her senses were too heavy
for a suspicion.

CHAPTER XXXVIII. CONVALESCENCE OF A HEALTHY MIND DISTRAUGHT

From an abandonment that had the last pleasure of life in a willingness
to yield it up, Diana rose with her friend's help in some state of
fortitude, resembling the effort of her feet to bear the weight of her
body. She plucked her courage out of the dust to which her heart had
been scattered, and tasked herself to walk as the world does. But she
was indisposed to compassionate herself in the manner of the burdened
world. She lashed the creature who could not raise a head like others,
and made the endurance of torture a support, such as the pride of being
is to men. She would not have seen any similarity to pride in it; would
have deemed it th