in the conjugation of the three primary verbs, to
be, to do, and to have, in relation, exclusively, to themselves, and
that merely from the skin outwards. Soul-processes and developments
were unknown to them in life, and were negligible in books. Lady
Isabel pursued her blameless way, doing nothing in particular,
diligently and unpunctually, and spending much time in writing long
and loving letters to those of her family who were no longer beneath
her wing, in that particular type of large loose handwriting whose
indefinite spikes stab to the heart any hope of literary interest. Who
shall say that she did not do her duty according to her lights? But
she was certainly quite unconscious of such matters as soul-processes.

Alone of the Mount Music children, Christian was aware of an inner
personality to be considered, some spirit that heard and responded to
those voices and intimations that, as a little child, she had accepted
as a commonplace of every day. By the time that she was sixteen the
voices had been discouraged, if not stilled, their intimations dulled;
but she had discovered her soul, and had discovered also, that it had
been born on the farther side of the river of life from the souls of
her brethren, and that although, for the first stages, the stream was
narrow, and the way on one bank very like that on the other, the two
paths were divided by deep water, and the river widened with the
passing years.

Richard, pursuing the usual course of Irish eldest sons, had adopted
the profession least adapted for young men of small means, and large
spending capacity, and had gone into his father's old regiment. John,
the zealot of an earlier day, was at Oxford, considering the Church;
Georgy's career has been announced, and the remaining twin had, with
the special predisposition of his family towards financial failure,
selected the profession of land-agent, in a country in which
peasant-proprietorship was already in the air, and would soon become
an accomplished fact.

There remains, to complete the family history, Judith, and she, now
aged twenty-one, was possibly the sole member of the house of
Talbot-Lowry for whom a successful future might confidently be
anticipated. Judith, a buccaneer by nature and by practice, was
habitually engaged in swash-bucklering it on a round of visits. She
was good-looking, tall, talkative, and an able player of all the games
proper to the state of life to which she had been called. She