How it might occur, she heard hourly from her hostess, Lady Arpington; from Henrietta as well, in different terms.  He seemed to her no longer the stationed nobleman, but one of other idle men, and the saddest of young men.  His weakness cast a net on her.  Worse than that drag of compassion, she foresaw the chance of his having experience of her own weakness, if she was to be one among idle women:  she might drop to the love of him again.  Chillon’s damping of her enthusiasm sank her to a mere breathing body, miserably an animal body, no comrade for a valiant brother; this young man’s feeble consort, perhaps:  and a creature thirsting for pleasure, disposed to sigh in the prospect of caresses.  Enthusiasm gone, her spirited imagination of active work on the field of danger beside her brother flapped a broken wing.

She fell too low in her esteem to charge it upon Henrietta that she stood hesitating, leaning on the hated side of the debate; though she could almost have blamed Chillon for refusing her his positive counsel, and not ordering his wife to follow him.  Once Lady Arpington, reasoning with her on behalf of the husband who sought reconciliation, sneered at her brother’s project, condemned it the more for his resolve to carry it out now that he had means.  The front of a shower sprang to Carinthia’s eyelids.  Now that her brother had means, he from whom she might be divided was alert to keep his engagement and study war on the field, as his father had done in foreign service, offering England a trained soldier, should his country subsequently need him.  The contrast of her heroic brother and a luxurious idle lord scattering blood of bird or stag, and despising the soldier’s profession, had a singular bitter effect, consequent on her scorn of words to defend the man her heart idolized.  This last of young women for weeping wept in the lady’s presence.

The feminine trick was pardoned to her because her unaccustomed betrayal of that form of enervation was desired.  It was read as woman’s act of self-pity over her perplexity:  which is a melting act with the woman when there is no man to be dissolved by it.  So far Lady Arpington judged rightly; Carinthia’s tears, shed at the thought of her brother under the world’s false judgement of him, left her spiritless to resist her husband’s advocates.  Unusual as they were, almost unknown, they were thunder-drops and shook her.

All for the vivid surface, the Dame frets at stresses laid on undercurrents.  There is no bridling her unless the tale be here told of how Lord Brailstone in his frenzy of the disconcerted rival boasted over town the counterstroke he had dealt Lord Fleetwood, by sending Mrs. Levellier a statement of the latter nobleman’s base plot to thwart her husband’s wager, with his foul agent, the repentant and well-paid ruffian in person, to verify every written word.  The town’s conception of the necessity for the reunion of the earl and countess was too intense