e are certain
times and periods when what I would like to call poisonous influences
are abroad, that touch my fate in the days to come. I know I am
helpless. I can only wander up and down."

"That sounds like a creed of fatalism."

"It is not a creed; it is a matter of nerves. A creed has its 'kismet.'
The nerves are wild horses."

"It is something to be fought against," said Cornelia admonishingly.

"Is it something to be distrusted?"

"I should say, yes."

"Then I was wrong?"

He stooped eagerly, in his temperate way, to catch sight of her
answering face. Cornelia's quick cheeks took fire. She fenced with a
question of two, and stood in a tremble, marvelling at his intuition.
For possibly, at that moment when he stood watching her window-light
(ah, poor heart!) she was half-pledging her word to her sisters (in a
whirl of wrath at Wilfrid, herself, and the world), that she would take
the lead in breaking up Brookfield.

An event occurred that hurried them on. They received a visit from
their mother's brother, John Pierson, a Colonel of Uhlans, in the
Imperial-Royal service. He had rarely been in communication with them;
his visit was unexpected. His leave of absence from his quarters in
Italy was not longer than a month, and he was on his way to Ireland, to
settle family business; but he called, as he said, to make acquaintance
with his nieces. The ladies soon discovered, in spite of his foreign-cut
chin and pronounced military habit of speech and bearing, that he was at
heart fervidly British. His age was about fifty: a man of great force of
shoulder and potent length of arm, courteous and well-bred in manner,
he was altogether what is called a model of a cavalry officer. Colonel
Pierson paid very little attention to his brother-in-law, but the ladies
were evidently much to his taste; and when he kissed Cornelia's hand,
his eyes grew soft, as at a recollection.

"You are what your mother once promised to be," he said. To her he gave
that mother's portrait, taking it solemnly from his breast-pocket,
and attentively contemplating it before it left his hands. The ladies
pressed him for a thousand details of their mama's youthful life;
they found it a strange consolation to talk of her and image her like
Cornelia. The foreign halo about the Colonel had an effect on them that
was almost like what nobility produces; and by degrees they heated
their minds to conceive that they were consenting to an outrage on that