“He’s just that sort of a man he’d never be happy anywhere else.  He hones for the place.  No, he’ll go back and kill himself.  I’m sorry, but it can’t be helped.  I’m not sorry I came away from him; I’m not sorry I changed my name, and did all the things I s’pose he’s told you I did, and that I s’pose you think are so wicked.  I’d do it again if I was as frightened and as angry.  Was he to make me his slave-wife? That’s what he wanted of me!  I know the man!”—­scornfully—­“he said it was for my good, but it was his own way he wanted.”  All the forced quiescence of her manner had changed to fire.  “And if you think that I’m unnatural, and wicked to pretend I had a different name, and to do what I did to get quit of him, then I’ll go among people who will think it was clever and a fine joke, and will think more about my fine appearance than about being good all day long.”

Sophia was terribly roused by the torrent of feeling that was now pouring forth, not more in words than in silent force, from the young woman who stood over her.

“Go!” she cried, “go to such people.  Marry the man who cares for your hair and your good looks.  Urge him on to make money, and buy yourself clothes and carriages and houses.  I have no doubt you can do it!  I tell you, Eliza Cameron, such things are not much worth picking up at a gift, let alone selling the nicer part of yourself for them!”

The two had suddenly clashed, with word and feeling, the one against the other.

The window of Eliza’s room was open, and the prospect from it had that far-off peace that the prospect from high windows is apt to have.  The perfect weather breathed calm over the distant land, over the nearer village; but inside, the full light fell upon the two women aglow with their quarrel.

Sophia, feeling some instinctive link to the vain, ambitious girl before her, struck with words as one strikes in the dark, aiming at a depth and tenderness that she dimly felt to be there.

She believed in, and yet doubted, the strength in the better part of Eliza’s heart; believed, but spoke hurriedly, because she felt that a chilly doubt was coming over her as to whether, after all, there was any comprehension, any answering thrill, for the words she said.

Her own stately beauty was at its height, at its loveliest hour, when she spoke.  She had been, in girlhood, what is called a beauty; she had dazzled men’s eyes and turned their heads; and when the first bloom was past, she had gone out of the glare, having neither satisfied the world nor been satisfied with it, because of the higher craving that is worldly disability.  She had turned into the common paths of life and looked upon her beauty and her triumph as past.  And yet, ten years after the triumphs of her girlhood, this day, this hour, found her more beautiful than she had ever been before.  The stimulus of a new and more perfect climate, the daily labour for which others