broke through her dark
wood. Henrietta brought her liberty. How far guilty her husband might be,
she was absolved from considering; sufficiently guilty to release her.
Upon that conclusion, pity for the awakened Riette shed purer tear-drops
through the gratitude she could not restrain, could hardly conceal, on
her sister's behalf and her own. Henrietta's prompt despatch to Croridge
to fetch the babes, her journey down out of a sick-room to stop Chillon's
visit to London, proved her an awakened woman, well paid for the stain on
her face, though the stain were lasting. Never had she loved Henrietta,
never shown her so much love, as on the road to the deepening colours of
the West. Her sisterly warmth surprised the woeful spotted beauty with a
reflection that this martial Janey was after all a woman of feeling, one
whom her husband, if he came to know it and the depth of it, the rich
sound of it, would mourn in sackcloth to have lost.

And he did, the Dame interposes for the final word, he mourned his loss
of Carinthia Jane in sackcloth and ashes, notwithstanding that he had the
world's affectionate condolences about him to comfort him, by reason of
his ungovernable countess's misbehaviour once more, according to the
report, in running away with a young officer to take part in a foreign
insurrection; and when he was most the idol of his countrymen and
countrywomen, which it was once his immoderate aim to be, he mourned her
day and night, knowing her spotless, however wild a follower of her
father's MAXIMS FOR MEN. He believed--some have said his belief was not
in error--that the woman to aid and make him man and be the star in human
form to him, was miraculously revealed on the day of his walk through the
foreign pine forest, and his proposal to her at the ducal ball was an
inspiration of his Good Genius, continuing to his marriage morn, and then
running downwards, like an overstrained reel, under the leadership of his
Bad. From turning to turning of that descent, he saw himself advised to
retrieve the fatal steps, at each point attempting it just too late;
until too late by an hour, he reached the seaport where his wife had
embarked; and her brother, Chillon John, cruelly, it was the common
opinion, refused him audience. No syllable of the place whither she fled
abroad was vouchsafed to him; and his confessions of sins and repentance
of them were breathed to empty air. The wealthiest nobleman of all
England stood on the pi