Her rejected petition to her husband for an allowance of money, on the day in Wales, became the vivid memory which brings out motives in its glow.  Her husband hated her brother; and why?  But the answer was lighted fierily down another avenue.  A true husband, a lord of wealth, would have rejoiced to help the brother of his wife.  He was the cause of Chillon’s ruin and this adventure to restore his fortunes.  Could she endure a close alliance with the man while her brother’s life was imperilled?  Carinthia rebuked her drowsy head for not having seen his reason for refusing at the time.  ’How long I am before I see anything that does not stare in my face!’ She was a married woman, whose order of mind rendered her singularly subject to the holiness of the tie; and she was a weak woman, she feared.  Already, at intervals, now that action on a foreign field of the thunders and lightnings was denied, imagination revealed her dissolving to the union with her husband, and cried her comment on herself as the world’s basest of women for submitting to it while Chillon’s life ran risks; until finally she said:  ’Not before I have my brother home safe!’ an exclamation equal to a vow.

That being settled, some appearance of equanimity returned; she talked of the scarlet business as one she participated in as a distant spectator.  Chillon’s chief was hurrying the embarkation of his troops; within ten days the whole expedition would be afloat.  She was to post to London for further purchases, he following to take leave of his wife and babe.  Curiously, but hardly remarked on during the bustle of work, Livia had been the one to send her short account of the great day at Calesford; Henrietta, the born correspondent, pencilling a couple of lines; she was well, dreadfully fatigued, rather a fright from a trip of her foot and fall over a low wire fence.  Her message of love thrice underlined the repeated word.

Henrietta was the last person Carinthia would have expected to meet midway on the London road.  Her name was called from a carriage as she drove up to the door of the Winchester hostlery, and in the lady, over whose right eye and cheek a covering fold of silk concealed a bandage, the voice was her sister Riette’s.  With her were two babes and their nursemaids.

‘Chillon is down there—­you have left him there?’ Henrietta greeted her, saw the reply, and stepped out of her carriage.  ’You shall kiss the children afterwards; come into one of the rooms, Janey.’

Alone together, before an embrace, she said, in the voice of tears hardening to the world’s business, ’Chillon must not enter London.  You see the figure I am.  My character’s in as bad case up there—­thanks to those men!  My husband has lost his “golden Riette.”  When you see beneath the bandage!  He will have the right to put me away.  His “beauty of beauties”!  I’m fit only to dress as a page-boy and run at his heels.  My hero! my poor dear!  He thinking I cared for nothing but amusement, flattery.  Was ever a punishment so cruel to the noblest of generous husbands!  Because I know he will overlook it, make light of it, never reproach his Riette.  And the rose he married comes to him a shrivelled leaf of a potpourri heap.  You haven’t seen me yet.  I was their “beautiful woman.”  I feel for my husband most.’