Arabella was critic enough to smile at this last.  On the whole she was passably content for the moment, in a severe fashion, save to feel herself the dreadful lying engine and fruitlessly abject person that she had become.

We imagine that when souls have had a fall, they immediately look up and contrast their present with their preceding position.  This does not occur.  The lower their fall, the less, generally, their despair, for despair is a business of the Will, and when they come heavily upon their humanity, they get something of the practical seriousness of nature.  If they fall very low, the shock and the sense that they are still on their feet make them singularly earnest to set about the plain plan of existence—­getting air for their lungs and elbow-room.  Contrast, that mother of melancholy, comes when they are some way advanced upon the upward scale.  The Poles did not look up to their lost height, but merely exerted their faculties to go forward; and great as their ambition had been in them, now that it was suddenly blown to pieces, they did not sit and weep, but strove in a stunned way to work ahead.  The truth is, that we rarely indulge in melancholy until we can take it as a luxury:  little people never do, and they, when we have not put them on their guard, are humankind naked.

The yachting excursions were depicted vividly by Adela, and were addressed as a sort of reproach to the lugubrious letters of her sister.  She said pointedly once:  “Really, if we are to be miserable, I turn Catholic and go into a convent.”  The strange thing was that Arabella imagined her letters to be rather of a cheerful character.  She related the daily events at Brookfield:—­the change in her father’s soups, and his remarks on them, and which he preferred; his fight with his medicine, and declaration that he was as sound as any man on shore; the health of the servants; Mr. Marter the curate’s call with a Gregorian chant; doubts of his orthodoxy; Cornelia’s lonely walks and singular appetite; the bills, and so forth—­ending, “What is to be said further of her?”

In return, Adela’s delight was to date each day from a different port, to which, catching the wind, the party had sailed, and there slept.  The ladies were under the protecting wing of the Hon. Mrs. Bayruffle, a smooth woman of the world.  “You think she must have sinned in her time, but are certain it will never be known,” wrote Adela.  “I do confess, kind as she is, she does me much harm; for when she is near me I begin to think that Society is everything.  Her tact is prodigious; it is never seen—­only felt.  I cannot describe her influence; yet it leads to nothing.  I cannot absolutely respect her; but I know I shall miss her acutely when we part.  What charm does she possess?  I call her the Hon. Mrs. Heathen—­Captain G., the Hon. Mrs. Balm.  I know you hate nicknames.  Be merciful to people yachting.  What are we to do?  I would look through a telescope all day