flashed, northward.



CHAPTER II.


IT is said that opposite characters make a union happiest; and perhaps
Lord Ipsden, diffident of himself, felt the value to him of a creature so
different as Lady Barbara Sinclair; but the lady, for her part, was not
so diffident of herself, nor was she in search of her opposite. On the
contrary, she was waiting patiently to find just such a man as she was,
or fancied herself, a woman.

Accustomed to measure men by their characters alone, and to treat with
sublime contempt the accidents of birth and fortune, she had been a
little staggered by the assurance of this butterfly that had proposed to
settle upon her hand--for life.

In a word, the beautiful writer of the fatal note was honestly romantic,
according to the romance of 1848, and of good society; of course she was
not affected by hair tumbling back or plastered down forward, and a
rolling eye went no further with her than a squinting one.

Her romance was stern, not sickly. She was on the lookout for iron
virtues; she had sworn to be wooed with great deeds, or never won; on
this subject she had thought much, though not enough to ask herself
whether great deeds are always to be got at, however disposed a lover may
be.