“So,” said Lady Gosstre, “Georgey did not waste her time after all, Charlotte.”

What the latter thought was:  “She could not handle a sword or fire a pistol.  Would I have consented to be mere camp-baggage?” Yet no woman admired Georgiana Ford so much.  Disappointment vitiated many of Lady Charlotte’s first impulses; and not until strong antagonism had thrown her upon her generosity could she do justice to the finer natures about her.  There was full life in her veins; and she was hearing the thirty fatal bells that should be music to a woman, if melancholy music; and she had not lived.  Time, that sounded in her ears, as it kindled no past, spoke of no future.  She was in unceasing rivalry with all of her sex who had a passion, or a fixed affection, or even an employment.  A sense that she was wronged by her fate haunted this lady.  Rivalry on behalf of a man she would have held mean—­she would have plucked it from her bosom at once.  She was simply envious of those who in the face of death could say, “I have lived.”  Pride, and the absence of any power of self-inspection, kept her blind to her disease.  No recollection gave her boy save of the hours in the hunting-field.  There she led gallantly; but it was not because of leading that she exulted.  There the quick blood struck on her brain like wine, and she seemed for a time to have some one among the crowns of life.  An object—­who cared how small?—­was ahead:  a poor old fox trying to save his brush; and Charlotte would have it if the master of cunning did not beat her.  “It’s my natural thirst for blood,” she said.  She did not laugh as she thought now and then that the old red brush dragging over grey dews toward a yellow yolk in the curdled winter-morning sky, was the single thing that could make her heart throb.

Brookfield was supported in its trial by the discomfiture of the Tinleys.  These girls, with their brother, had evidently plotted to ‘draw out’ Mrs. Chump.  They had asked concerning her, severally; and hearing that she had not returned from town, had each shown a blank face, or had been doubtful of the next syllable.  Of Wilfrid, Emilia, and Mr. Pole, question and answer were interchanged.  “Wilfrid will come in a few minutes.  Miss Belloni, you know, is preparing for Italy.  Papa?  Papa, I really do fear will not be able to join us.”  Such was Brookfield’s concerted form of reply.  The use of it, together with the gaiety of dancing blood, gave Adela (who believed that she ought to be weeping, and could have wept easily) strange twitches of what I would ask permission to call the juvenile ‘shrug-philosophy.’  As thus:  ’What creatures we are, but life is so!’ And again, ’Is not merriment dreadful when a duty!’ She was as miserable as she could be but not knowing that youth furnished a plea available, the girl was ashamed of being cheerful at all.  Edward Burley’s sketch of Mr. Pericles scattering his band, sent her into muffled screams of laughter;