resh; "if I have lost my temper, I believe
I was right to lose it--at least, that no one could have been expected
not to lose it, I will never beg his pardon for it, let Aunt Isobel
say what she will. I should hate him ever after if I did, for the
injustice of the thing. Pardon, indeed!"

I turned at the top of the room and paced back towards the window,
towards the long illuminated text, and that

"---- Noble face,
So sweet and full of grace,"

which bent unchangeable from the emblem of suffering and
self-sacrifice.

I have a trick of talking to myself and to inanimate objects. I
addressed myself now to the text and the picture.

"But if I don't," I continued, "if after being confirmed with Philip
in the autumn, we come to just one of our old catastrophes in the very
next holidays, as bad as ever, and spiting each other to the last--I
shall take you all down to-morrow! I don't pretend to be able to
persuade myself that black is white--like Mrs. Rampant; but I am not a
hypocrite, I won't ornament my room with texts, and crosses, and
pictures, and symbols of Eternal Patience, when I do not even mean to
_try_ to sacrifice myself, or to be patient."

It is curious how one's faith and practice hang together. I felt very
doubtful whether it was even desirable that I should. Whether we did
not misunderstand GOD'S will, in thinking that it is well
that people in the right should ever sacrifice themselves for those
who are in the wrong. I did not however hide from myself, that to say
this was to unsay all my resolves about my besetting sin. I decided to
take down my texts, pictures, and books, and grimly thought that I
would frame a fine photograph Charles had given me of a lioness, and
would make a new inscription, the motto of the old Highland Clan
Chattan--with which our family is remotely connected--"_Touch not the
cat but a glove_."[1]

[Footnote 1: _Anglice_ "without a glove."]

"Put on your gloves next time, Master Philip!" I thought. "I shall
make no more of these feeble attempts to keep in my claws, which only
tempt you to irritate me beyond endurance. We're an ill-tempered
family, and you're not the most amiable member of it. For my own part,
I can control my temper when it is not running away with me, and be
fairly kind to the little ones, so long as they do what I tell them.
But, at a crisis like this, I can no more yield to your unreasonable
wishes, stifle my just anger, apologize for a little wr