rated him. Besides, a Queen of Blondes would not draw the hearts
out of men in England, as in Italy and in Spain. Aminta had got thus
far when she found 'Queen of Brunes' expunged by a mist: she imagined
hearing the secretary's laugh. She thought he was right to laugh at her.
She retorted simply: 'These are feelings that are poetry.'

A man may know nothing about them, and be an excellent schoolmaster.

Suggestions touching the prudence of taking Mrs. Lawrence into her
confidence, as regarded these troublesome letters of the man with the
dart in his breast, were shuffled aside for various reasons: her modesty
shrank; and a sense of honour toward the man forbade it. She would have
found it easier to do if she had conspired against her heart in doing
it. And yet, cold-bloodedly to expose him and pluck the clothing from a
passion--dear to think of only when it is profoundly secret--struck
her as an extreme baseness, of which not even the woman who perused and
reperused his letters could be guilty.

Her head rang with some of the lines, and she accused her head of the
crime of childishness, seeing that her heart was not an accomplice. At
the same time, her heart cried out violently against the business of
a visit to Lady de Culme, and all the steps it involved. Justly she
accused her heart of treason. Heart and head were severed. This, as
she partly apprehended, is the state of the woman who is already on the
slope of her nature's mine-shaft, dreading the rush downwards, powerless
to break away from the light.

Letters perused and reperused, coming from a man never fervently noticed
in person, conjure features one would wish to put beside the actual,
to make sure that the fiery lines he writes are not practising a
beguilement. Aminta had lost grasp of the semblance of the impassioned
man. She just remembered enough of his eyes to think there might be
healing in a sight of him.

Latterly she had refused to be exhibited to a tattling world as the
great nobleman's conquest:--The 'Beautiful Lady Doubtful' of a report
that had scorched her cars. Theatres, rides, pleasure-drives, even such
houses as she saw standing open to her had been shunned. Now she asked
the earl to ride in the park.

He complied, and sent to the stables immediately, just noted another
of her veerings. The whimsy creatures we are matched to contrast with,
shift as the very winds or feather-grasses in the wind. Possibly a fine
day did it. Possibly, too,