omposure about a week after the Fall.
On first learning of her anomalous position Lady Constantine had blushed
hot, and her pure instincts had prompted her to legalize her marriage
without a moment's delay. Heaven and earth were to be moved at once to
effect it. Day after day had passed; her union had remained unsecured,
and the idea of its nullity had gradually ceased to be strange to her;
till it became of little account beside her bold resolve for the young
man's sake.

XXXVI

The immediate effect upon St. Cleeve of the receipt of her well-reasoned
argument for retrocession was, naturally, a bitter attack upon himself
for having been guilty of such cruel carelessness as to leave in her way
the lawyer's letter that had first made her aware of his uncle's
provision for him. Immature as he was, he could realize Viviette's
position sufficiently well to perceive what the poor lady must suffer at
having suddenly thrust upon her the responsibility of repairing her own
situation as a wife by ruining his as a legatee. True, it was by the
purest inadvertence that his pending sacrifice of means had been
discovered; but he should have taken special pains to render such a
mishap impossible. If on the first occasion, when a revelation might
have been made with impunity, he would not put it in the power of her
good nature to relieve his position by refusing him, he should have shown
double care not to do so now, when she could not exercise that
benevolence without the loss of honour.

With a young man's inattention to issues he had not considered how sharp
her feelings as a woman must be in this contingency. It had seemed the
easiest thing in the world to remedy the defect in their marriage, and
therefore nothing to be anxious about. And in his innocence of any
thought of appropriating the bequest by taking advantage of the loophole
in his matrimonial bond, he undervalued the importance of concealing the
existence of that bequest.

The looming fear of unhappiness between them revived in Swithin the warm
emotions of their earlier acquaintance. Almost before the sun had set he
hastened to Welland House in search of her. The air was disturbed by
stiff summer blasts, productive of windfalls and premature descents of
leafage. It was an hour when unripe apples shower down in orchards, and
unbrowned chestnuts descend in their husks upon the park glades. There
was no help for it this afternoon but to call upon her in a