fun within due limits. For it proved so excessively
exhilarating to deal thus with Angelo Luigi Francesco! She had old
scores to settle. And had she not this very day received an odiously
disquieting letter from him, in which he not only made renewed
complaint of her poor, little miseries of debts and flirtations, but
once more threatened retaliation by a cutting-off of supplies? In
common justice did he not deserve villification? Therefore, partly out
of revenge, partly in self-justification, she proceeded with increasing
enthusiasm to show that to know M. de Vallorbes was a lamentably
liberal education in all civilised iniquities. With a hand, sure as it
was light, she dissected out the unhappy gentleman, and offered up his
mangled and bleeding reputation as tribute to her own so-perpetually
outraged moral sense and feminine delicacy, not to mention her
so-repeatedly and vilely wounded heart. And there really was truth--as
at each fresh flight of her imagination she did not fail to remind
herself--in all that which she said. Truth?--yes, just that misleading
sufficiency of it in which a lie thrives. For, as every artist "in this
kind" is aware, precisely as you would have the overgrowth of your
improvisation richly phenomenal and preposterous, must you be careful
to set the root of it in the honest soil of fact. To omit this
precaution is to court eventual detection and consequent confusion of
face.

As it was, Helen entered the house at Newlands, a house singularly
unused to psychological aberrations, in buoyant spirits, mischief
sitting in her discreetly downcast eyes, laughter perplexing her lips.
She had placed her cargo of provocation, of resentment, to such
excellent advantage! She was, moreover, slightly intoxicated by her own
eloquence. She was at peace with herself and all mankind, with de
Vallorbes even since his sins had afforded her so rare an opportunity.
And this occasioned her to congratulate herself on her own conspicuous
magnanimity. It is so exceedingly pleasing not only to know yourself
clever, but to believe yourself good! She would be charming to these
dear kind, rather dull people. Not that Honoria was dull, but she had
inconveniently austere notions of honour and loyalty at moments. And
then the solitary drive home with Richard Calmady lay ahead, full of
possible drama, full of, well, heaven knew what! Oh! how entrancing a
pastime is life!

But to Richard, walking the snorting and impatient ho