its gift, so may it have heiresses. The Countess's star had not blinked
balefully at her. That was one reason why she went straight on to
Beckley.

Again: the Countess was a born general. With her star above, with
certain advantages secured, with battalions of lies disciplined and
zealous, and with one clear prize in view, besides other undeveloped
benefits dimly shadowing forth, the Countess threw herself headlong into
the enemy's country.

But, that you may not think too highly of this lady, I must add that the
trivial reason was the exciting cause--as in many great enterprises.
This was nothing more than the simple desire to be located, if but for a
day or two, on the footing of her present rank, in the English country-
house of an offshoot of our aristocracy. She who had moved in the first
society of a foreign capital--who had married a Count, a minister of his
sovereign, had enjoyed delicious high-bred badinage with refulgent
ambassadors, could boast the friendship of duchesses, and had been the
amiable receptacle of their pardonable follies; she who, moreover,
heartily despised things English:--this lady experienced thrills of proud
pleasure at the prospect of being welcomed at a third-rate English
mansion. But then, that mansion was Beckley Court. We return to our
first ambitions, as to our first loves not that they are dearer to us,
--quit that delusion: our ripened loves and mature ambitions are probably
closest to our hearts, as they deserve to be--but we return to them
because our youth has a hold on us which it asserts whenever a
disappointment knocks us down. Our old loves (with the bad natures I
know in them) are always lurking to avenge themselves on the new by
tempting us to a little retrograde infidelity. A schoolgirl in Fallow
field, the tailor's daughter, had sighed for the bliss of Beckley Court.