of having chosen from many--Mrs. Kame added that she had
only lately seen Elsie Shorter, whose admiration for Honora was greater
than ever. A sentiment, Honora reflected a little bitterly, that Mrs.
Shorter herself had not taken the pains to convey. Consistency was not
Elsie's jewel.

It must perhaps be added for the sake of enlightenment that since going
to Newport Honora's view of the writer of this letter had changed. In
other words, enlarging ideals had dwarfed her somewhat; it was strictly
true that the lady was a boon companion of everybody. Her Catholicism
had two limitations only: that she must be amused, and that she must
not--in what she deemed the vulgar sense--be shocked.

Honora made several attempts at an answer before she succeeded in
saying, simply, that Hugh was too absorbed in his work of reconstruction
of the estate for them to have house-parties this autumn. And even this
was a concession hard for her pride to swallow. She would have preferred
not to reply at all, and this slightest of references to his work--and
hers--seemed to degrade it. Before she folded the sheet she looked again
at that word "reconstruction" and thought of eliminating it. It was too
obviously allied to "redemption"; and she felt that Mrs. Kame could not
understand redemption, and would ridicule it. Honora went downstairs and
dropped her reply guiltily into the mail-bag. It was for Hugh's sake she
was sending it, and from his eyes she was hiding it.

And, while we are dealing with letters, one, or part of one, from
Honora's aunt, may perhaps be inserted here. It was an answer to one
that Honora had written a few days after her installation at Grenoble,
the contents of which need not be gone into: we, who know her, would
neither laugh nor weep at reading it, and its purport may be more or
less accurately surmised from her aunt's reply.

"As I wrote you at the time, my dear,"--so it ran "the shock which
your sudden marriage with Mr. Chiltern caused us was great--so great
that I cannot express it in words. I realize that I am growing old,
and perhaps the world is changing faster than I imagine. And I
wrote you, too, that I would not be true to myself if I told you
that what you have done was right in my eyes. I have asked myself
whether my horror of divorce and remarriage may not in some degree
be due to the happiness of my life with your uncle. I am,
undoubtedly, an exceptionally fortunate woman; and