rom translations,
and thought she understood him every word. Then she was somewhat
High-Church in her notions, and used to go up every Wednesday and
Friday to the chapel in the hills, where Lancelot had met her, for
an hour's mystic devotion, set off by a little graceful asceticism.
As for Lancelot, she never thought of him but as an empty-headed
fox-hunter who had met with his deserts; and the brilliant accounts
which the all smoothing colonel gave at dinner of Lancelot's
physical well doing and agreeable conversation only made her set him
down the sooner as a twin clever-do-nothing to the despised
Bracebridge, whom she hated for keeping her father in a roar of
laughter.

But her sister, little Honoria, had all the while been busy messing
and cooking with her own hands for the invalid; and almost fell in
love with the colonel for his watchful kindness. And here a word
about Honoria, to whom Nature, according to her wont with sisters,
had given almost everything which Argemone wanted, and denied almost
everything which Argemone had, except beauty. And even in that, the
many-sided mother had made her a perfect contrast to her sister,--
tiny and luscious, dark-eyed and dark-haired; as full of wild simple
passion as an Italian, thinking little, except where she felt much--
which was, indeed, everywhere; for she lived in a perpetual April-
shower of exaggerated sympathy for all suffering, whether in novels
or in life; and daily gave the lie to that shallow old calumny, that
'fictitious sorrows harden the heart to real ones.'

Argemone was almost angry with her sometimes, when she trotted whole
days about the village from school to sick-room: perhaps conscience
hinted to her that her duty, too, lay rather there than among her
luxurious day-dreams. But, alas! though she would have indignantly
repelled the accusation of selfishness, yet in self and for self
alone she lived; and while she had force of will for any so-called
'self-denial,' and would fast herself cross and stupefied, and quite
enjoy kneeling thinly clad and barefoot on the freezing chapel-floor
on a winter's morning, yet her fastidious delicacy revolted at
sitting, like Honoria, beside the bed of the ploughman's consumptive
daughter, in a reeking, stifling, lean-to garret, in which had slept
the night before, the father, mother, and two grown-up boys, not to
mention a new-married couple, the sick girl, and, alas! her baby.