Lady Rowley, there remains here that pernicious thing,--a
king. The feeling of the dominion of a single man,--and that of a
single woman is, for aught I know, worse,--with me so clouds the air,
that the breath I breathe fails to fill my lungs." Wallachia, as she
said this, put forth her hand, and raised her chin, and extended
her arm. She paused, feeling that justice demanded that Lady Rowley
should have a right of reply. But Lady Rowley had not a word to say,
and Wallachia Petrie went on. "I cannot adapt my body to the sweet
savours and the soft luxuries of the outer world with any comfort to
my inner self, while the circumstances of the society around me are
oppressive to my spirit. When our war was raging all around me I was
light-spirited as the lark that mounts through the morning sky."

"I should have thought it was very dreadful," said Lady Rowley.

"Full of dread, of awe, and of horror, were those fiery days of
indiscriminate slaughter; but they were not days of desolation,
because hope was always there by our side. There was a hope in
which the soul could trust, and the trusting soul is ever light and
buoyant."

"I dare say it is," said Lady Rowley.

"But apathy, and serfdom, and kinghood, and dominion, drain the
fountain of its living springs, and the soul becomes like the plummet
of lead, whose only tendency is to hide itself in subaqueous mud and
unsavoury slush."

Subaqueous mud and unsavoury slush! Lady Rowley repeated the words to
herself as she made good her escape, and again expressed to herself
her conviction that it could not possibly be so. The "subaqueous mud
and unsavoury slush," with all that had gone before it about the
soul was altogether unintelligible to her; but she knew that it was
American buncom of a high order of eloquence, and she told herself
again and again that it could not be so. She continued to keep her
eyes upon Mr. Glascock, and soon saw him again talking to Nora. It
was hardly possible, she thought, that Nora should speak to him
with so much animation, or he to her, unless there was some feeling
between them which, if properly handled, might lead to a renewal of
the old tenderness. She went up to Nora, having collected the other
girls, and said that the carriage was then waiting for them. Mr.
Glascock immediately offered Lady Rowley his arm, and took her
down to the hall. Could it be that she was leaning upon a future
son-in-law? There was something in the thought which ma