for the absence of a runaway woman, not ceasing to suffer, never blaming the woman, and consequently, it could be fancied, blaming himself, broke down Lady Charlotte’s defences and moved her to review her part in her brother Rowsley’s unhappiness.  For supposing him to blame himself, her power to cast a shadow of blame on him went from her, and therewith her vindication of her conduct.  He lived at Olmer.  She read him by degrees, as those who have become absolutely tongueless have to be read; and so she gathered that this mortally (or lastingly) wounded brother of hers was pleased by an allusion to his Aminta.  He ran his finger on the lines of a map of Spain, from Barcelona over to Granada; and impressed his nail at a point appearing to be mountainous or woody.  Lady Charlotte suggested that he and his Aminta had passed by there.  He told a story of a carriage accident:  added, ‘She was very brave.’  One day, when he had taken a keepsake book of England’s Beauties off the drawing-room table, his eyes dwelt on a face awhile, and he handed it, with a nod, followed by a slight depreciatory shrug.  ‘Like her, not so handsome,’ Lady Charlotte said.

He nodded again.  She came to a knowledge of Aminta’s favourite colours through the dwelling of his look on orange and black, deepest rose, light yellow, light blue.  Her grand-daughters won the satisfied look if they wore a combination touching his memory.  The rocky are not imaginative, and have to be struck from without for a kindling of them.  Submissive though she was to court and soothe her brother Rowsley, a spur of jealousy burned in the composition of her sentiments, to set her going.  He liked visiting Mrs. Lawrence Finchley at her effaced good man’s country seat, Brockholm in Berkshire, and would stay there a month at a time.  Lady Charlotte learnt why.  The enthusiast for Aminta, without upholding her to her late lord, whom she liked well, talked of her openly with him, confessed to a fondness for her.  How much Mrs. Lawrence ventured to say, Lady Charlotte could not know.  But rivalry pushed her to the extreme of making Aminta partially a topic; and so ready was he to follow her lead in the veriest trifles recalling the handsome runaway; that she had to excite his racy diatribes against the burgess English and the pulp they have made of a glorious nation, in order not to think him inclining upon dotage.

Philippa’s occasional scoff in fun concerning ‘grandmama’s tutor,’ hurt Lady Charlotte for more reasons than one, notwithstanding the justification of her fore-thoughtfulness.  The girl, however, was privileged; she was Bobby Benlew’s dearest friend, and my lord loved the boy; with whom nothing could be done at school, nor could a tutor at Olmer control him.  In fine, Bobby saddened the family and gained the earl’s anxious affection by giving daily proofs of his being an Ormont in a weak frame; patently an Ormont, recurrently an invalid.  His moral qualities hurled him on his physical deficiencies.