r now and repeating themselves faintly for a
little time, just as one whose head is throbbing with some continued
sound still hears it through all his pulses, even when he has gone out
of reach of the reality. She seemed to be driving home with Lady Dacre's
face full of tenderness opposite her. The sympathy had been almost too
much for Elizabeth, her eyes had not met the compassionate glances. Sir
Temple had conversed for three; he had been very kind, too, but the
kindness hurt her, for she knew they pitied her.

Elizabeth had an humble way with her sometimes, and, as has been said,
her own achievements seemed to her worthless. She had nothing of that
blatant quality, vanity, which claims from others and by reason of its
arrogance gets to be called pride; but her dignity strove above
everything to be sufficient for itself. Such a spirit shrinks from
claiming the appreciation it hungers for, shrinks back into itself,
and passes for shyness, or humility, or anything but what it is, that
supreme pride that seeks from the world its highest, the allegiance of
love, in return for its own love of what is true and grand. Finding a
denial in those it meets, it draws away in a silence that to people who
rate assertion as power seems tameness, for its action is beyond them,
like sights that need a telescope, or sounds out of reach of the ear.
Pride like this has two possibilities. It is a Saint Christopher that
will serve only the highest. That unfound, it grows bitter, and shrinks
more and more into itself, and withers into hopelessness. But if it find
the Highest and draw upon that love too great for change or failure,
then all things have a new proportion, for grown up to the shelter of
the eternities, human judgments dwindle, and human slights, however they
may scar, cannot destroy.

The person Elizabeth seemed to see most clearly was Archdale in that one
moment in which all his heart had been revealed. Yet it seemed to her
that it was not of him that she was thinking most but of Katie's pain
and anger. If she were to be separated from Stephen Archdale forever,
what wonder that she was grieved with the woman who had done it? For
Elizabeth knew that though Katie liked admiration, she loved Stephen.
Elizabeth herself saw that he was superior, not only in appearance, but
in mind, to any of the suitors with whom she confessed that in event of
the worst it was possible that the girl might console herself.

But Elizabeth was by no