to learn, and if we take to activity, with the best intentions, we
conjugate a frightful disturbance. We are to run on lines, like the
steam-trains, or we come to no station, dash to fragments. I have the
misfortune to know I was born an active. I take my chance.'

Once she coupled the names of Lord Larrian and Lord Dannisburgh,
remarking that she had a fatal attraction for antiques.

The death of her husband's uncle and illness of his aunt withdrew her
to The Crossways, where she remained nursing for several months, reading
diligently, as her letters showed, and watching the approaches of the
destroyer. She wrote like her former self, subdued by meditation in the
presence of that inevitable. The world ceased barking. Lady Dunstane
could suppose Mr. Warwick to have now a reconciling experience of his
wife's noble qualities. He probably did value them more. He spoke of
her to Sir Lukin in London with commendation. 'She is an attentive
nurse.' He inherited a considerable increase of income when he and his
wife were the sole tenants of The Crossways, but disliking the house,
for reasons hard to explain by a man previously professing to share her
attachment to it, he wished to sell or let the place, and his wife would
do neither. She proposed to continue living in their small London house
rather than be cut off from The Crossways, which, he said, was ludicrous:
people should live up to their position; and he sneered at the place, and
slightly wounded her, for she was open to a wound when the cold fire of a
renewed attempt at warmth between them was crackling and showing bits of
flame, after she had given proof of her power to serve. Service to
himself and his relatives affected him. He deferred to her craze for The
Crossways, and they lived in a larger London house, 'up to their
position,' which means ever a trifle beyond it, and gave choice dinner-
parties to the most eminent. His jealousy slumbered. Having ideas of a