ousness of Christopher's disapproval of the easy-going,
Bohemian fashion in which she had chosen to walk through life, made
Elisabeth intensely angry; though she would have died rather than let
him know it. How dared this one man show himself superior to her, when
she had the world at her feet? It was insupportable! She said but little
to him, and he said still less to her, and what they did say was usually
limited to the affairs of the Osierfield; nevertheless Elisabeth
persistently weighed herself in Christopher's balances, and measured
herself according to Christopher's measures; and, as she did so, wrote
_Tekel_ opposite her own name. And for this she refused to forgive him.
She assured herself that his balances were false, and his measures
impossible, and his judgments hard in the extreme; and when she had done
so, she began to try herself thereby again, and hated him afresh because
she fell so far short of them.

But now he was going to see her in a new light; if he declined to admire
her in prosperity, he should be compelled to respect her in adversity;
for she made up her mind she would bear her reverses like a Spartan, if
only for the sake of proving to him that she was made of better material
than he, in his calm superiority, had supposed. When he saw for himself
how plucky she could be, and how little she really cared for outside
things, he might at last discover that she was not as unworthy of his
regard as he had once assumed, and might even want to be friends with
her again; and then she would throw his friendship back again in his
face, as he had once thrown hers, and teach him that it was possible
even for self-righteous people to make mistakes which were past
repairing. It would do him a world of good, Elisabeth thought, to find
out--too late--that he had misjudged her, and that other people besides
himself had virtues and excellences; and it comforted her, in the midst
of her adversities, to contemplate the punishment which was being
reserved for Christopher, when George Farringdon's son came into his
own. And she never guessed--how could she?--that when at last George
Farringdon's son did come into his own, there would be no Christopher
Thornley serving under him at the Osierfield; and that the cup of
remorse, which she was so busily preparing, was for her own drinking and
not for Christopher's.

Christopher's expected answer to her epistle was, however, not
forthcoming. The following morning Elisabe