THE COUNTESS DESCRIBES THE FIELD OF ACTION

Now, to clear up a point or two:  You may think the Comic Muse is straining human nature rather toughly in making the Countess de Saldar rush open-eyed into the jaws of Demogorgon, dreadful to her.  She has seen her brother pointed out unmistakeably as the tailor-fellow.  There is yet time to cast him off or fly with him.  Is it her extraordinary heroism impelling her onward, or infatuated rashness? or is it her mere animal love of conflict?

The Countess de Saldar, like other adventurers, has her star.  They who possess nothing on earth, have a right to claim a portion of the heavens.  In resolute hands, much may be done with a star.  As it has empires in its gift, so may it have heiresses.  The Countess’s star had not blinked balefully at her.  That was one reason why she went straight on to Beckley.

Again:  the Countess was a born general.  With her star above, with certain advantages secured, with battalions of lies disciplined and zealous, and with one clear prize in view, besides other undeveloped benefits dimly shadowing forth, the Countess threw herself headlong into the enemy’s country.

But, that you may not think too highly of this lady, I must add that the trivial reason was the exciting cause—­as in many great enterprises.  This was nothing more than the simple desire to be located, if but for a day or two, on the footing of her present rank, in the English country-house of an offshoot of our aristocracy.  She who had moved in the first society of a foreign capital—­who had married a Count, a minister of his sovereign, had enjoyed delicious high-bred badinage with refulgent ambassadors, could boast the friendship of duchesses, and had been the amiable receptacle of their pardonable follies; she who, moreover, heartily despised things English:—­this lady experienced thrills of proud pleasure at the prospect of being welcomed at a third-rate English mansion.  But then, that mansion was Beckley Court.  We return to our first ambitions, as to our first loves not that they are dearer to us, —­quit that delusion:  our ripened loves and mature ambitions are probably closest to our hearts, as they deserve to be—­but we return to them because our youth has a hold on us which it asserts whenever a disappointment knocks us down.  Our old loves (with the bad natures I know in them) are always lurking to avenge themselves on the new by tempting us to a little retrograde infidelity.  A schoolgirl in Fallow field, the tailor’s daughter, had sighed for the bliss of Beckley Court.  Beckley Court was her Elysium ere the ardent feminine brain conceived a loftier summit.  Fallen from that attained eminence, she sighed anew for Beckley Court.  Nor was this mere spiritual longing; it had its material side.  At Beckley Court she could feel her foreign rank.  Moving with our nobility as an equal, she could feel that the short dazzling glitter of her career was not illusory, and had left her something solid; not coin of the realm exactly, but yet gold.  She could not feel this in the Cogglesby saloons, among pitiable bourgeoises—­middle-class people daily soiled by the touch of tradesmen.  They dragged her down.  Their very homage was a mockery.