e mountain lures men
to climb till she winds them in vapour and leaves them groping, innocent
of the red crags below. The delicate thing had not picked his bones:
Patrick admitted it; he had seen his brother hale and stout not long
back. But oh! she was merciless, she was a witch. If ever queen-witch
was, she was the crowned one!

For a personal proof, now: he had her all round him in a strange district
though he had never cast eye on her. Yonder bare hill she came racing up
with a plume in the wind: she was over the long brown moor, look where he
would: and vividly was she beside the hurrying beck where it made edges
and chattered white. He had not seen, he could not imagine her face:
angelic dashed with demon beauty, was his idea of the woman, and there is
little of a portrait in that; but he was of a world where the elemental
is more individual than the concrete, and unconceived of sight she was a
recognised presence for the green-island brain of a youth whose manner of
hating was to conjure her spirit from the air and let fly his own in
pursuit of her.

It has to be stated that the object of the youngster's expedition to
Earlsfont was perfectly simple in his mind, however much it went against
his nature to perform it. He came for the purpose of obtaining Miss
Adister's Continental address; to gather what he could of her from her
relatives, and then forthwith to proceed in search of her, that he might
plead with her on behalf of his brother Philip, after a four years'
division of the lovers. Could anything be simpler? He had familiarised
himself with the thought of his advocacy during those four years. His
reluctance to come would have been accountable to the Adisters by a
sentiment of shame at his family's dealings with theirs: in fact, a
military captain of the O'Donnells had in old days played the adventurer
and charmed a maid of a certain age into yielding her hand to him; and
the lady was the squire of Earlsfont's only sister: she possessed funded
property. Shortly after the union, as one that has achieved the goal of
enterprise, the gallant officer retired from the service nor did
north-western England put much to his credit the declaration of his
wife's pronouncing him to be the best of husbands. She naturally said it
of him in eulogy; his own relatives accepted it in some contempt, mixed
with a relish of his hospitality: his wife's were constant in citing his
gain by the marriage. Could he possibly have been