had no charm, scarce a face. 'It is written that I should live in
barracks,' Lady Dunstane said. The colour of it taught white to impose a
sense of gloom. Her cat's love of the familiar inside corners was never
able to embrace the outer walls. Her sensitiveness, too, was racked by
the presentation of so pitiably ugly a figure to the landscape. She
likened it to a coarse-featured country wench, whose cleaning and
decorating of her countenance makes complexion grin and ruggedness yawn.
Dirty, dilapidated, hung with weeds and parasites, it would have been
more tolerable. She tried the effect of various creepers, and they were
as a staring paint. What it was like then, she had no heart to say.

One may, however, fall on a pleasurable resignation in accepting great
indemnities, as Diana bade her believe, when the first disgust began to
ebb. 'A good hundred over there would think it a Paradise for an
asylum': she signified London. Her friend bore such reminders meekly.
They were readers of books of all sorts, political, philosophical,
economical, romantic; and they mixed the diverse readings in thought,
after the fashion of the ardently youthful. Romance affected politics,
transformed economy, irradiated philosophy. They discussed the knotty
question, Why things were not done, the things being confessedly to do;
and they cut the knot: Men, men calling themselves statesmen, declined to
perform that operation, because, forsooth, other men objected to have it
performed on them. And common humanity declared it to be for the common
weal! If so, then it is clearly indicated as a course of action: we shut
our eyes against logic and the vaunted laws of economy. They are the
knot we cut; or would cut, had we the sword. Diana did it to the tune of
Garryowen or Planxty Kelly. O for a despot! The cry was for a
beneficent despot, naturally: a large-minded benevolent despot. In
short, a despot to obey their bidding. Thoughtful young people who think
through the heart soon come to this conclusion. The heart is the