man who adored her had quietly taken her up and fixed her in a fresh
post, of his own choosing entirely, in the new circles of changeing
events. Far from doing that, he appeared to be unaware that they went,
with the varying days, through circles, forming and reforming. He walked
rather as a man down a lengthened corridor, whose light to which he turns
is in one favourite corner, visible till he reaches the end. What
Cornelia was, in the first flaming of his imagination around her, she was
always, unaffected by circumstance, to remain. It was very hard. The
'ideal' did feel the want--if not of legs--of a certain tolerant
allowance for human laws on the part of her worshipper; but he was
remorselessly reverential, both by instinct and of necessity. Women are
never quite so mad in sentimentalism as men.

We have now looked into the hazy interior of their systems--our last
halt, I believe, and last examination of machinery, before Emilia quits
England.

About the time of the pairing of the birds, and subsequent to the
Brookfield explosion, Cornelia received a letter from her lover, bearing
the tone of a summons. She was to meet him by the decayed sallow--the
'fruitless tree,' as he termed it. Startled by this abruptness, her
difficulties made her take counsel of her dignity. "He knows that these
clandestine meetings degrade me. He is wanting in faith, to require
constant assurances. He will not understand my position!" She remembered
the day at Besworth, of which Adela (somewhat needlessly, perhaps) had
told her; that it had revealed two of the family, in situations
censurable before a gossiping world, however intrinsically blameless.
That day had been to the ladies a lesson of deference to opinion. It was
true that Cornelia had met her lover since, but she was then
unembarrassed. She had now to share in the duties of the
household--duties abnormal, hideous, incredible. Her incomprehensible
father was absent in town. Daily Wilfrid conducted Adela thither on
mysterious business, and then Mrs. Chump was left to Arabella and herself
in the lonely house. Numberless things had to be said for the quieting of
this creature, who every morning came downstairs with the exclamation
that she could no longer endure her state of uncertainty, and was "off to
a lawyer." It was useless to attempt the posture of a reply. Words, and
energetic words, the woman demanded, not expostulations--petitions that
she would be respectful to the hous