How, supposing the case of a wife?  Well, then comes the contest; and it is with an inferior, because not a born, legitimacy of union; which may be, which here and there is, affection; is generally the habit of partnership.  It is inferior, from not being the union of the blood; it is a matter merely of the laws and the tastes.  No love, she reasoned, is equal to the love of brother and sister:  not even the love of parents for offspring, or of children for mother and father.  Brother and sister have the holy young days in common; they have lastingly the recollection of their youth, the golden time when they were themselves, or the best of themselves.  A wife is a stranger from the beginning; she is necessarily three parts a stranger up to the finish of the history.  She thinks she can absorb the husband.  Not if her husband has a sister living!  She may cry and tear for what she calls her own:  she will act prudently in bowing her head to the stronger tie.  Is there a wife in Europe who broods on her husband’s merits and his injuries as the sister of Thomas Rowsley, Earl of Ormont does? or one to defend his good name, one to work for his fortunes, as devotedly?

Over and over Lady Charlotte drove her flocks, of much the same pattern, like billows before a piping gale.  They might be similar—­a puffed iteration, and might be meaningless and wearisome; the gale was a power in earnest.

Her brother sat locked-up.  She did as a wife would not have done, and held her peace.  He spoke; she replied in a few words—­blunt, to the point, as no wife would have done.

Her dear, warm-hearted Rowsley was shaken by the blow he had been obliged to deal to the woman—­poor woman!—­if she felt it.  He was always the principal sufferer where the feelings were concerned.  He was never for hurting any but the enemy.

His ‘Ha, here we dine!’ an exclamation of a man of imprisoned yawns at the apparition of the turnkey, was delightful to her, for a proof of health and sanity and enjoyment of the journey.

‘Yes, and I’ve one bottle left, in the hamper, of the hock you like,’ she said.  ‘That Mr. Weyburn likes it too.  He drank a couple coming down.’

She did not press for talk; his ready appetite was the flower of conversation to her.  And he slept well, he said.  Her personal experience on that head was reserved.

London enfolded them in the late evening of a day brewing storm.  My lord heard at the door of his house that Lady Ormont had not arrived.  Yet she had started a day in advance of him.  He looked down, up and round at Charlotte.  He looked into an empty hall.  Pagnell was not there.  A sight of Pagnell would, strange to say, have been agreeable.

Storm was in the air, and Aminta was on the road.  Lightning has, before now, frightened carriage-horses.  She would not misconduct herself; she would sit firm.  No woman in England had stouter nerve—­few men.

But the carriage might be smashed.  He was ignorant of the road she had chosen for her return.  Out of Wiltshire there would be no cliffs, quarries, river-banks, presenting dangers.  Those dangers, however, spring up when horses have the frenzy.