But if this confessed the truth, she was the insanest of women.  No woman could be surer that she had her wits.  She had come to see things, previously mysteries, with surprising clearness.  As, for example, that passion was part of her nature; therefore her very life, lying tranced.  She certainly could not love without passion such an abandonment was the sole justification of love in a woman standing where she stood.  And now for the first time she saw her exact position before the world; and she saw some way into her lord:  saw that he nursed a wound, extracted balm from anything enabling him to show the world how he despised it, and undesigningly immolated her for the petty gratification.

It could not, in consequence, be the truth.  To bear what she had borne she must be a passionless woman; and she was glad of her present safety in thinking it.  Once it was absolutely true.  She swam away to the golden-circled Island of Once; landed, and dwelt there solitarily and blissfully, looking forward to Sunday’s walk round the park, looking back on it.  Proudly she could tell herself that her dreams of the Prince of the island had not been illusions as far as he was concerned; for he had a great soul.  He did not aim at a tawdry glory.  He was a loss to our army—­no loss to his country or the world.  A woman might clasp her feeling of pride in having foreseen distinction for him; and a little, too, in distinguishing now the true individual distinction from the feathered uniform vulgar.  Where the girl’s dreams had proved illusions, she beheld in a title and luxuries, in a loveless marriage.

That was perilous ground.  Still it taught her to see that the substantial is the dust; and passion not being active, she could reflect.  After a series of penetrative flashes, flattering to her intelligence the more startling they were, reflection was exhausted.  She sank on her nature’s desire to join or witness agonistic incidents, shocks, wrestlings, the adventures which are brilliant air to sanguine energies.  Imagination shot tap, and whirled the circle of a succession of them; and she had a companion and leader, unfeatured, reverently obeyed, accepted as not to be known, not to be guessed at, in the deepest hooded inmost of her being speechlessly divined.

The sudden result of Aminta’s turmoil was a determination that she must look on Steignton.  And what was to be gained by that?  She had no idea.  And how had she stopped her imaginative flight with the thought of looking on Steignton?  All she could tell was, that it would close a volume.  She could not say why the volume must be closed.

Her orders for the journey down to Steignton were prompt.  Mrs. Pagnell had an engagement at the house of Lady Staines for the next day to meet titles and celebrities, and it precluded her comprehension of the project.  She begged to have the journey postponed.  She had pledged her word, she said.