Yet this mere shallow woman would not hesitate to meet the terrible Lady Charlotte at any instant, on any terms:  and what are we to think of a soldier, hero, lion, dreading to tell her to her face that the persecuted woman is his wife!

‘Am I a woman they can be ashamed of?’ she asked, and did not seek the answer at her mirror.  She was in her bedroom, and she put out a hand to her jewel-box, fingered it, found it locked, and abandoned her idle project.  A gentleman was ‘dangerous.’  She had not found him so.  He had the reputation, perhaps, because he was earnest.  Not so very many men are earnest.  She called to recollection how ludicrously practical he was in the thick of his passion.  His third letter (addressed to the Countess of Ormont—­whom he manifestly did not or would not take to be the veritable Countess—­and there was much to plead for his error), or was it his fourth?—­the letters were a tropical hail-storm:  third or fourth, he broke off a streaked thunderpeal, to capitulate his worldly possessions, give the names and degrees of kinship of his relatives, the exact amount of the rent-roll of his Yorkshire estates, of his funded property.

Silly man! but not contemptible.  He proposed everything in honour, from his view of it.

Whether in his third, fourth, or fifth letter. . . .  How many had come?  She drew the key from her purse, and opened a drawer.  The key of the jewel-box was applied to the lock.

Mr. Morsfield had sent her six flaming letters.  He not only took no precautions, he boasted that he hailed the consequences of discovery.  Six!

She lifted a pen:  it had to be done.

He was briefly informed that he disturbed her peace.  She begged he would abstain from any further writing to her.

The severity was in the brevity.  The contrast of her style and his appeared harsh.  But it belonged to the position.

Having with one dash of the pen scribbled her three lines, she slipped the letter into her pocket.  That was done, and it had to be done; it ought to have been done before.  How simple it was when one contemplated it as actually done!  Aminta made the motion of a hand along the paper, just a flourish.  Soon after, her head dropped back on the chair, and her eyes shut, she took in breath through parted lips.  The brief lines of writing had cut away a lump of her vitality.

CHAPTER XI

THE SECRETARY TAKEN AS AN ANTIDOTE

Dusty wayfarers along a white high-road who know of a bubbling little spring across a stile, on the woodland borders of deep grass, are hailed to sit aside it awhile:  and Aminta’s feverishness was cooled by now and then a quiet conversation with the secretary ambitious to become a school-master.  Lady Charlotte liked him, so did her lord; Mrs. Lawrence had chatted with him freshly, as it was refreshing to recollect; nobody thought him a stunted growth.