in a stone's throw
of this new tragedy. But was not that what bills of lading call the "Act
of God"--fair play, as it were, on the part of Fate? What was this?...
Come--this would never do, with a pulse like that!

No one should ever feel his pulse, or hers, at night. Gwen was none the
better for doing it. Nor did she benefit by an operation which her mind
called looking matters calmly in the face. It consisted in imaginary
forecasts of a _status quo_ that was to come about. She had to skip some
years as too horrible even to dream of; years needed to live down the
worst raw sense of guilt, and become hardened to inevitable life. Then
she filled in her _scenario_ with Sir Adrian Torrens, the blind Squire
of Pensham Steynes, and his beautiful and accomplished wife, a dummy
with no great vitality, constructed entirely out of a ring on Mr.
Torrens's finger and an allusion of Irene's to the Miss Gertrude
Abercrombie, whose skill in needlework surpassed Arachne's. Gwen did not
supply this lady with a sufficiently well-marked human heart. Perhaps
the temptation to make her clever and shrewd but not sympathetic, not
quite up to her husband's deserts, was irresistible. It allowed of an
unprejudiced consciousness of what she, Gwen, would have been in this
dummy's situation. It allowed latitude to a fancy that portrayed Lady
Gwendolen Whatever-she-had-become--because, of course, _she_ would have
to marry some fool--as the staunch and constant friend of the family at
Pensham. Her devotion to the dummy when in trouble--and, indeed, she
piled up calamities for the unhappy lady--was monumental; an example to
her sex. And when, to the bitter grief of her devoted husband, the dummy
died--all parties being then, at a rough estimate, forty--and she
herself, his dearest friend, stood by the dummy's grave with him, and,
generally speaking, sustained him in his tribulation, a disposition to
get the fool out of the way grew strong enough to make its victim doubt
her own vouchers for her own absolute disinterestedness. She turned
angrily upon her fancies, tore them to tatters, flung them to the winds.
One does this, and then the pieces join themselves together and reappear
intact.

She was no nearer sleep after looking matters calmly in the face, that
way, for a full hour. Similar trials to dramatize a probable future all
ended on the same lines, and each time Gwen was indignant with herself
for her own folly. What was this man to her, whom s