to kick: calmer;
firm, calm, persuasive.'

'Does Mr. Dacier agree?'

'Not always. He has the inveterate national belief that Celtic blood
is childish, and the consequently illogical disregard of its hold of
impressions. The Irish--for I have them in my heart, though I have not
been among them for long at a time--must love you to serve you, and
will hate you if you have done them injury and they have not wiped it
out--they with a treble revenge, or you with cordial benefits. I have
told him so again and again: ventured to suggest measures.'

'He listens to you, Tony?'

'He says I have brains. It ends in a compliment.'

'You have inspired Mr. Redworth.'

'If I have, I have lived for some good.'

Altogether her Tony's conversation proved to Emma that her perusal of
the model of THE YOUNG MINISTER OF STATE was an artist's, free, open,
and not discoloured by the personal tincture. Her heart plainly was
free and undisturbed. She had the same girl's love of her walks where
wildflowers grew; if possible, a keener pleasure. She hummed of her
happiness in being at Copsley, singing her Planxty Kelly and The
Puritani by turns. She stood on land: she was not on the seas. Emma
thought so with good reason.

She stood on land, it was true, but she stood on a cliff of the land,
the seas below and about her; and she was enabled to hoodwink her friend
because the assured sensation of her firm footing deceived her own soul,
even while it took short flights to the troubled waters. Of her firm
footing she was exultingly proud. She stood high, close to danger,
without giddiness. If at intervals her soul flew out like lightning
from the rift (a mere shot of involuntary fancy, it seemed to her), the
suspicion of instability made her draw on her treasury of impressions
of the mornings at Lugano--her loftiest, purest, dearest; and these
reinforced her. She did not ask herself why she should have to seek them
for aid. In other respects her mind was alert and held no sly covers,
as the fiction of a perfect ignorant innocence combined with common
intelligence would have us to suppose that the minds of women can do.
She was honest as long as she was not directly questioned, pierced to
the innermost and sanctum of the bosom. She could honestly summon bright
light to her eyes in wishing the man were married. She did not ask
herself why she called it up. The remorseless progressive interrogations
of a Jesuit Father in pursuit of the bosom's v