ering
her against all women.

If Renee had faults, Beauchamp thought of her as at sea breasting
tempests, while Cecilia was a vessel lying safe in harbour, untried,
however promising: and if Cecilia raised a steady light for him, it was
over the shores he had left behind, while Renee had really nothing to do
with warning or rescuing, or with imperilling; she welcomed him simply
to a holiday in her society. He associated Cecilia strangely with the
political labours she would have had him relinquish; and Renee with a
pleasant state of indolence, that her lightest smile disturbed. Shun
comparisons.

It is the tricksy heart which sets up that balance, to jump into it on
one side or the other. Comparisons come of a secret leaning that is sure
to play rogue under its mien of honest dealer: so Beauchamp suffered
himself to be unjust to graver England, and lost the strength she would
have given him to resist a bewitchment. The case with him was, that his
apprenticeship was new; he had been trotting in harness as a veritable
cab-horse of politics--he by blood a racer; and his nature craved for
diversions, against his will, against his moral sense and born tenacity
of spirit.

Not a word further of the glove. But at night, in his bed, the glove
was a principal actor in events of extraordinary magnitude and
inconsequence.

He was out in the grounds with the early morning light. Coffee and sweet
French bread were brought out to him, and he was informed of the hours
of reunion at the chateau, whose mistress continued invisible. She might
be sleeping. He strolled about, within view of the windows, wondering
at her subservience to sleep. Tourdestelle lay in one of those Norman
valleys where the river is the mother of rich pasture, and runs hidden
between double ranks of sallows, aspens and poplars, that mark its
winding line in the arms of trenched meadows. The high land on either
side is an unwatered flat up to the horizon, little varied by dusty
apple-trees planted in the stubble here and there, and brown mud walls
of hamlets; a church-top, a copse, an avenue of dwarf limes leading to
the three-parts farm, quarter residence of an enriched peasant striking
new roots, or decayed proprietor pinching not to be severed from
ancient. Descending on the deep green valley in Summer is like a change
of climes. The chateau stood square at a branch of the river, tossing
three light bridges of pretty woodwork to park and garden. Great
bouq