rnally! the desolating
answer knelled. Nevertheless the poor, the starving, the overtaxed in
labour, they have a right to the cry of Now! now! They have; and if
a cry could conduct us to the secret of aiding, healing, feeding,
elevating them, we might swell the cry. As it is, we must lay it on our
wits patiently to track and find the secret; and meantime do what the
individual with his poor pittance can. A miserable contribution! sighed
the girl. Old Self was perceived in the sigh. She was haunted.

After all, one must live one's life. Placing her on a lower pedestal
in her self-esteem, the philosophy of youth revived her; and if the
abatement of her personal pride was dispiriting, she began to see an
advantage in getting inward eyes.

'It's infinitely better I should know it, Emmy--I'm a reptile! Pleasure
here, pleasure there, I'm always thinking of pleasure. I shall give
up thinking and take to drifting. Neither of us can do more than open
purses; and mine's lean. If the old Crossways had no tenant, it would be
a purse all mouth. And charity is haunted, like everything we do. Only
I say with my whole strength yes, I am sure, in spite of the men
professing that they are practical, the rich will not move without a
goad. I have and hold--you shall hunger and covet, until you are strong
enough to force my hand:--that 's the speech of the wealthy. And they
are Christians. In name. Well, I thank heaven I'm at war, with myself.'

'You always manage to strike out a sentence worth remembering, Tony,'
said Lady Dunstane. 'At war with ourselves, means the best happiness we
can have.'

It suited her, frail as her health was, and her wisdom striving to the
spiritual of happiness. War with herself was far from happiness in the
bosom of Diana. She wanted external life, action, fields for energies,
to vary the struggle. It fretted and rendered her ill at ease. In her
solitary rides with Sir Lukin through a long winter season, she appalled
that excellent but conventionally-minded gentleman by starting,
nay supporting, theories next to profane in the consideration of a
land-owner. She spoke of Reform: of the Repeal of the Corn Laws as the
simple beginning of the grants due to the people. She had her ideas, of
course, from that fellow Redworth, an occasional visitor at Copsley;
and a man might be a donkey and think what he pleased, since he had a
vocabulary to back his opinions. A woman, Sir Lukin held, was by nature
a mute in polit