it is not to listen nor to talk, that I am in need of, but to act.'

'Yes, my dear girl, but not to act insanely. I do love soundness of
head. You have it, only just now you're a little astray. We'll leave
this matter for another time.'

Rosamund held him by the arm. 'Not too long!'

Both of them applied privately to Mrs. Wardour-Devereux for her opinion
and counsel on the subject of the proposal to apologize to Dr. Shrapnel.
She was against it with the earl, and became Rosamund's echo when with
her. When alone, she was divided into two almost equal halves: deeming
that the countess should not insist, and the earl should not refuse: him
she condemned for lack of sufficient spiritual insight to perceive the
merits of his wife's request: her she accused of some vestige of
something underbred in her nature, for putting such fervid stress upon
the supplication: i.e. making too much of it--a trick of the vulgar: and
not known to the languid.

She wrote to Lydiard for advice.

He condensed a paragraph into a line:

'It should be the earl. She is driving him to it, intentionally or not.'

Mrs. Devereux doubted that the countess could have so false an idea of
her husband's character as to think it possible he would ever be bent to
humble himself to the man he had castigated. She was right. It was by
honestly presenting to his mind something more loathsome still, the
humbling of herself, that Rosamund succeeded in awakening some remote