nature, finding in them justification and support of her own mental
attitude--of the entire wisdom of which she had, it must be owned,
grown slightly suspicious of late.

And this was the more grateful to her, not only as contrast to the
noise and dust of a lengthy and hurriedly-undertaken journey, but
because that same journey had been suddenly and, in a sense violently,
imposed upon one whom she held in highest regard, by another whom she
had long since agreed with herself to hold in no sort of regard at all.
Since the highly-regarded one set forth, she--Honoria--of course, set
forth likewise. And yet, in good truth, the whole affair rubbed her not
a little the wrong way! She recognised in it a particularly flagrant
example of masculine aggression. Some persons, as she reflected, are
permitted an amount of elbow room altogether disproportionate to their
deserts. Be sufficiently selfish, sufficiently odious, and everybody
becomes your humble servant, hat in hand! That is unfair. It is,
indeed, quite extensively exasperating to the dispassionate onlooker.
And, in Miss St. Quentin's case, exasperation was by no means lessened
by the fact that candour compelled her to admit doubt not only as to
the actuality of her own dispassionateness, but, as has already been
stated, to the wisdom of her mental attitude generally. She wanted to
think and feel one way. She was more than half afraid she was much
disposed to think and feel quite another way. This was worrying. And,
therefore, it came about that Honoria hailed the present interval of
silence and solitude, striving to put from her remembrance both the
origin and object of her journey, while filling her lungs with the
snow-fed purity of the mountain wind and yielding her spirit to the
somewhat serious influences of surrounding nature. All too soon the
great Paris-express would thunder into the station. The heavy,
horse-box-like sleeping-car--now standing on the Culoz-Geneva-Bale
siding--would be coupled to the rear of it. Then the roar and rush
would begin again--from dark to dawn, and on through the long, bright
hours to dark once more, by mountain gorge, and stifling tunnel, and
broken woodland, and smiling coastline, and fertile plain, past
Chambery, and Turin, and Bologna, and mighty Rome herself, until the
journey was ended and distant Naples reached at last.

But Miss St. Quentin's communings with nature were destined to speedy
interruption. Ludovic Quayle's elongate