ut the answer was lighted
fierily down another avenue. A true husband, a lord of wealth, would have
rejoiced to help the brother of his wife. He was the cause of Chillon's
ruin and this adventure to restore his fortunes. Could she endure a close
alliance with the man while her brother's life was imperilled? Carinthia
rebuked her drowsy head for not having seen his reason for refusing at
the time. 'How long I am before I see anything that does not stare in my
face!' She was a married woman, whose order of mind rendered her
singularly subject to the holiness of the tie; and she was a weak woman,
she feared. Already, at intervals, now that action on a foreign field of
the thunders and lightnings was denied, imagination revealed her
dissolving to the union with her husband, and cried her comment on
herself as the world's basest of women for submitting to it while
Chillon's life ran risks; until finally she said: 'Not before I have my
brother home safe!' an exclamation equal to a vow.

That being settled, some appearance of equanimity returned; she talked of
the scarlet business as one she participated in as a distant spectator.
Chillon's chief was hurrying the embarkation of his troops; within ten
days the whole expedition would be afloat. She was to post to London for
further purchases, he following to take leave of his wife and babe.
Curiously, but hardly remarked on during the bustle of work, Livia had
been the one to send her short account of the great day at Calesford;
Henrietta, the born correspondent, pencilling a couple of lines; she was
well, dreadfully fatigued, rather a fright from a trip of her foot and
fall over a low wire fence. Her message of love thrice underlined the
repeated word.

Henrietta was the last person Carinthia would have expected to meet
midway on the London road. Her name was called from a carriage as she
drove up to the door of the Winchester hostlery, and in the lady, over
whose right eye and cheek a covering fold of silk concealed a bandage,
the voice was her sister Riette's. With her were two babes and their
nursemaids.

'Chillon is down there--you have left him there?' Henrietta greeted her,
saw the reply, and stepped out of her carriage. 'You shall kiss the
children afterwards; come into one of the rooms, Janey.'

Alone together, before an embrace, she said, in the voice of tears
hardening to the world's business, 'Chillon must not enter London. You
see the figure I am. My character's