‘Does Mr. Dacier agree?’

’Not always.  He has the inveterate national belief that Celtic blood is childish, and the consequently illogical disregard of its hold of impressions.  The Irish—­for I have them in my heart, though I have not been among them for long at a time—­must love you to serve you, and will hate you if you have done them injury and they have not wiped it out—­they with a treble revenge, or you with cordial benefits.  I have told him so again and again:  ventured to suggest measures.’

‘He listens to you, Tony?’

‘He says I have brains.  It ends in a compliment.’

‘You have inspired Mr. Redworth.’

‘If I have, I have lived for some good.’

Altogether her Tony’s conversation proved to Emma that her perusal of the model of the young minister of state was an artist’s, free, open, and not discoloured by the personal tincture.  Her heart plainly was free and undisturbed.  She had the same girl’s love of her walks where wildflowers grew; if possible, a keener pleasure.  She hummed of her happiness in being at Copsley, singing her Planxty Kelly and The Puritani by turns.  She stood on land:  she was not on the seas.  Emma thought so with good reason.

She stood on land, it was true, but she stood on a cliff of the land, the seas below and about her; and she was enabled to hoodwink her friend because the assured sensation of her firm footing deceived her own soul, even while it took short flights to the troubled waters.  Of her firm footing she was exultingly proud.  She stood high, close to danger, without giddiness.  If at intervals her soul flew out like lightning from the rift (a mere shot of involuntary fancy, it seemed to her), the suspicion of instability made her draw on her treasury of impressions of the mornings at Lugano—­her loftiest, purest, dearest; and these reinforced her.  She did not ask herself why she should have to seek them for aid.  In other respects her mind was alert and held no sly covers, as the fiction of a perfect ignorant innocence combined with common intelligence would have us to suppose that the minds of women can do.  She was honest as long as she was not directly questioned, pierced to the innermost and sanctum of the bosom.  She could honestly summon bright light to her eyes in wishing the man were married.  She did not ask herself why she called it up.  The remorseless progressive interrogations of a Jesuit Father in pursuit of the bosom’s verity might have transfixed it and shown her to herself even then a tossing vessel as to the spirit, far away from that firm land she trod so bravely.