she would be content to shine as a candle in a grated lanthorn?
The generosity of men speculating upon other men's possessions is known.
Yet the man who loves a woman has to the full the husband's jealousy
of her good name. And a lover, that without the claims of the alliance,
can be wounded on her behalf, is less distracted in his homage by the
personal luminary, to which man's manufacture of balm and incense is
mainly drawn when his love is wounded. That contemplation of her
incomparable beauty, with the multitude of his ideas fluttering round it,
did somewhat shake the personal luminary in Redworth. He was conscious
of pangs. The question bit him: How far had she been indiscreet or
wilful? and the bite of it was a keen acid to his nerves. A woman
doubted by her husband, is always, and even to her champions in the first
hours of the noxious rumour, until they had solidified in confidence
through service, a creature of the wilds, marked for our ancient running.
Nay, more than a cynical world, these latter will be sensible of it. The
doubt casts her forth, the general yelp drags her down; she runs like the
prey of the forest under spotting branches; clear if we can think so, but
it has to be thought in devotedness: her character is abroad. Redworth
bore a strong resemblance to, his fellowmen, except for his power of
faith in this woman. Nevertheless it required the superbness of her
beauty and the contrasting charm of her humble posture of kneeling by the
fire, to set him on his right track of mind. He knew and was sure of
her. He dispersed the unhallowed fry in attendance upon any stirring of
the reptile part of us, to look at her with the eyes of a friend. And if
. . . !--a little mouse of a thought scampered out of one of the
chambers of his head and darted along the passages, fetching a sweat to
his brows. Well, whatsoever the fact, his heart was hers! He hoped he
could be charitable to women.

She rose from her knees and said: 'Now, please, give me the letter.'