r,
and bird filling eye and ear with beauty, the sight of the spot chilled
her heart. Here Lord Constantine had offered her his love and his life
the year before. To her it had been a frightful scene, this strong,
handsome, clever man, born to the highest things of mind, heart, talent
and rank, kneeling before her, pleading with pallid face for her love,
... and all the rest of it! She would have sunk down with shame but for
his kindness in accepting the situation, and carrying her through it.

Why his proposal shocked her his lordship could not see at first. He
understood before his mournful interview and ended. Honora was of that
class, to whom marriage does not present itself as a personal concern.
She had the true feminine interest in the marriage of her friends, and
had vaguely dreamed of her own march to the altar, an adoring lover, a
happy home and household cares. Happy in the love of a charming mother
and a high-hearted father, she had devoted her youthful days to them and
to music. They stood between her and importunate lovers, whose
intentions she had never divined.

With the years came trouble, the death of the mother, the earning of her
living by her art, the care of her father, and the work for her native
land. Lovers could not pursue this busy woman, occupied with father and
native land, and daily necessity. The eternal round of travel,
conspiracy, scheming, planning, spending, with its invariable ending of
disappointment and weariness of heart, brought forth a longing for the
peace of rest, routine, satisfied aspirations; and from a dream the
convent became a passion, longed for as the oasis by the traveler in the
sands.

Simple and sincere as light, the hollow pretence of the world disgusted
her. Her temperament was of that unhappy fiber which sees the end almost
as speedily as the beginning; change and death and satiety treading on
the heels of the noblest enterprise. For her there seemed no happiness
but in the possession of the everlasting, the unchangeable, the divinely
beautiful. Out of these feelings and her pious habits rose the longing
for the convent, for what seemed to be permanent, fixed, proportioned,
without dust and dirt and ragged edges, and wholly devoted to God.

After a little Lord Constantine understood her astonishment, her
humiliation, her fright. He had a wretched satisfaction in knowing that
no other man would snatch this prize; but oh, how bitter to give her up
even to God! T