ally don't know which.'

'Yes,' mused Beatrice, 'she was a problem to you. You never troubled
yourself to puzzle over my character, aunt.'

'When a stream is of lovely clearness, Beatrice, we do not find it hard
to determine the kind of ground it flows over.'

'I will owe you a kiss for that,' said the girl, blushing hot with very
joy. 'But you are a flatterer, dear aunt, and just now I am very humble
in spirit. I think great happiness should make us humble, don't you? I
find it hard to make out my claim to it.'

'Be humble still, dear, and the happiness will not be withdrawn.'

'I do like to talk with you,' Beatrice replied. 'I never go away without
something worth thinking of.'

Humility she strove to nourish. It was a prime virtue of woman, and
'would sweeten her being. Unlike Emily, she was not inspired with an
ardent idealism independently of her affections; with love had begun her
conscious self-study, and love alone exalted her. Her many frivolous
tendencies she had only overcome by dint of long endeavour to approach
Wilfrid's standard. If in one way this was an item of strength, in
another it indicated a very real and always menacing weakness. Having
gained that to which her every instinct had directed itself, she made
the possession of her bliss an indispensable factor of life; to lose it
would be to fall into nether darkness, into despair of good. So widowed,
there would be no support in herself; she knew it, and the knowledge at
moments terrified her. Even her religious convictions, once very real
and strong, had become subordinate; her creed--though she durst not
confess it--was that of earthly love. Formerly she had been thrown back
on religious emotion as a solace, an anodyne; for that reason the
tendencies inherited from her mother had at one time reached a climax of
fanaticism. Of late years, music had been her resource, the more
efficient in that it ministered to hope. By degrees even her charitable
activity had diminished; since her mother's death she had abandoned the
habit of 'district visiting.' As confidence of the one supreme
attainment grew in her, the mere accessories of her moral life were
allowed to fall away. She professed no change of opinion, indeed under.
went none, but opinion became, as with most women, distinct from
practice. She still pretended to rejoice as often as she persuaded
Wilfrid to go to church, but it was noticeable that she willingly
allowed his preference for the bet