endours of their plumage. She enjoyed the turn of her own
wrist, its gold chain-bracelet and the handsome lace falling away from
and displaying it, as she held out the handfuls of corn. She enjoyed
even that space of rose-scarlet declaring itself between the dull blue
of her dress and the gray, weathered surface of the stone.

But all these formed only the accompaniment, the ground-tone, to more
reasoned, more vital enjoyments. Before her, beyond the carriage sweep,
lay the square lawn enclosed by red walls and by octagonal, pepper-pot
summer-houses, whereon--unwillingly, yet in obedience to the wild
justice of revenge--Roger Ormiston had shot the Clown, half-brother to
Touchstone, race-horse of mournful memory. As a child Helen had heard
that story. Now her somewhat light, blue-gray eyes, their beautiful
lids raised wide for once, looked out curiously upon the space of
dew-powdered turf; while the corners of her mouth--a mouth a trifle
thin lipped, yet soft and dangerously sweet for kissing--turned upward
in a reflective smile. She, too, knew what it was to be angry, to the
point of revenge; had indeed come to Brockhurst not without purpose of
that last tucked away in some naughty convolution of her active brain.
But Brockhurst and its inhabitants had proved altogether more
interesting than she had anticipated. This was the fourth day of her
visit, and each day had proved more to her taste than the preceding
one. So she concluded this matter of revenge might very well stand over
for the moment, possibly stand over altogether. The present was too
excellent, of its kind, to risk spoiling. Helen de Vallorbes valued the
purple and fine linen of a high civilisation; nor did she disdain,
within graceful limits, to fare sumptuously every day. She valued all
that is beautiful and costly in art, of high merit and distinction in
literature. Her taste was sure and just, if a little more disposed
towards that which is sensuous than towards that which is spiritual.
And in all its many forms she appreciated luxury, even entertaining a
kindness for that necessary handmaid of luxury--waste. Appreciated
these the more ardently, that, with birth-pangs at the beginning of
each human life, death-pangs and the corruption of the inevitable grave
at the close of each, all this lapping, meanwhile, of the doomed flesh
in exaggerations of ease and splendour seemed to her among the very
finest ironies of the great comedy of existence. It heighten