r heroine in the
idea that she could be glory's queen and all the rest of it, to any
human creature, not to say any poet, just now. She felt humbled and
deeply depressed. In her own eyes she was lowered by what she knew of
her own heart. Her pride had received a terrible wound, almost a death
wound. The little world she had made so proudly for herself had all
crumbled into dust. It is not wonderful if at such a time there should
be, in spite of her sense of the ridiculous and her senses generally, a
certain soothing influence in the fact that there still was some one in
whose eyes she appeared a person of account and even of dignity. At all
events, let it be frankly said, that when the first shock and stir of
the ridiculous were passed, Minola was not inclined to think more
harshly than before of the poor poet who called her his patroness and
his queen. As to the expense of the publication, she was a little
startled at first, but that sensation very quickly passed away. She was
not enough of a woman of business yet to care about the cost of
anything so long as she had the money to pay. It would run her hard in
her first year of independent life, to pay this much, but then she
could pay it and live somehow, and it would only be a case for strict
economy in the future for some time. Besides, it seemed that whether
she would or not, she was likely to have much more money than she
wanted or could use for any purposes of her own. Then she was further
stimulated to carelessness by Mr. Heron's letter.

"If he thinks I care about money, or the cost of serving a friend, he
is mistaken," she said. "His caution and his protestations are thrown
away on me."

For she was much inclined to be unjust and harsh in her mind toward
Heron now. He had committed, all unconsciously, a terrible offence. He
had, without knowing it, made her fall in love with him. So she made
the best of the whole affair, cost, dedication, glory's queen, and all;
and when Mary Blanchet came to look at the precious volume, and to go
into raptures over it, Minola did her very best to seem contented, and
not even to suggest a criticism, or to ask what this or that meant. She
reminded herself that the late Lord Lytton had written contemptuously
of the "fools on fools" who "still ask what Hamlet means."

"This may be as far off from me as Hamlet from other people," she told
herself. "Why confess myself a fool by asking what anything means? And
in any case Mary Bla