troubled in her sound head and
warm heart. She was no fool in her simplicity. She knew that Bourhope
did not in any sense belong to Mrs. Spottiswoode and Corrie, and she
had shrewdly suspected of late that their anticipated arrangements
would not be carried out. She could not help occasionally turning over
in her mind the circumstance that Cecilia was very plain, but that
depressed Mortimer Delville nevertheless bestowed his heart on her,
though the gift, like her fortune, was disastrous to Cecilia for many
a long day. Chrissy thought that if Bourhope were independent and
original enough to like her--to love her--he was his own master; there
was nothing between him and his inclination save her inclination and
her father and mother's will. And there was little doubt about father
and mother's will with respect to a man so worthy, so unexceptionable,
and so well endowed as Bourhope.

Nor was there anything like duty to the Spottiswoodes to stand between
Bourhope and Chrissy. But still Chrissy's nice sense of honour was
disturbed, for had she not a guess that a very different result had been
expected? Nay, she had even a half-comical notion that she herself had
been expressly selected as a companion to Corrie Hunter during the
gaieties of the yeomanry weeks, because she would also prove a sort of
harmless foil.

A dream of love was a grand shock to Chrissy's quiet life, making wild
yet plaintive music, like all nature's true harmonies, within her, and
filling her mind with tremulous light which glorified every object, and
was fain even to dazzle herself. It was not unnatural that Bourhope
should excite such a dream. But Chrissy was not completely dazzled. It
was only a dream as yet, and she would be the mistress of her dream; it
should not be the mistress of her. So she resolved, showing herself a
reasonable, thoughtful, conscientious woman, as well as a loving, fairly
proportioned, and lovely human spirit.

Chrissy retained all her sober senses. She recollected what was due both
to the hero and to the others concerned. She was neither a weak victim,
nor a headstrong, arrogant, malicious conqueror. Like all genuine women,
she struggled against yielding herself without her due--without a
certainty that there was no irreversible mistake in the matter. She was
not a girl to get love-sick at the first bout, nor one to run even at a
worthy lover's beckoning, though she would sacrifice much, and do it
proudly, joyously, for t