persuasive rhetoric, 'prove myself an Englishman.' I was to show that
'the honour, interests, reputation and position of any lady (demented or
not,' she added) 'were as precious to me as to the owner': that 'no woman
was ever in peril of a shadow of loss in the hands of an English
gentleman,' and so forth, rather surprisingly to me, remembering her off-
hand manner of the foregoing day. But the sense of responsibility thrown
upon her ideas of our superior national dignity had awakened her fervider
naturalness--made her a different person, as we say when accounting, in
our fashion, for what a little added heat may do.

The half hour allotted to me fled. I went from the room and the house,
feeling that I had seen and heard her who was barely of the world of
humankind for me, so strongly did imagination fly with her. I kissed her
fingers, I gazed in her eyes, I heard the beloved voice. All passed too
swift for happiness. Recollections set me throbbing, but recollection
brought longing. She said, 'Now I have come I must see you, Harry.'
Did it signify that to see me was a piece of kindness at war with her
judgement? She rejoiced at my perfect recovery, though it robbed her of
the plea in extenuation of this step she had taken. She praised me for
abstaining to write to her, when I was stammering a set of hastily-
impressed reasons to excuse myself for the omission. She praised my step
into Parliament. It did not seem to involve a nearer approach to her.
She said, 'You have not wasted your time in England.' It was for my
solitary interests that she cared, then.

I brooded desperately. I could conceive an overlooking height that made
her utterance simple and consecutive: I could not reach it. Topics which
to me were palpitating, had no terror for her. She said, 'I have
offended my father; I have written to him; he will take me away.'
In speaking of the letter which had caused her to offend, she did not