in sadness, or claim condolence for this wound inflicted on him by the
daughter he had idolised other than through the indirect method of
causing people to wonder at her chosen yoke-fellow. Their stupefaction
refreshed him. Yet he was a gentleman capable of apprehending
simultaneously that he sinned against his pride in the means he adopted
to comfort his nature. But the wound was a perpetual sickness needing
soul-medicine. Proud as he was, and unbending, he was not stronger than
his malady, and he could disguise, he could not contain, the cry of
immoderate grief. Adiante had been to him something beyond a creature
beloved; she had with her glorious beauty and great-heartedness been the
sole object which had ever inspirited his imagination. He could have
thought no man, not the most illustrious, worthy of her. And there she
was, voluntarily in the hands of a monster! 'Husband!' Mr. Adister broke
away from Caroline, muttering: 'Her husband's policy!'

She was used to his interjections; she sat thinking more of the strange
request to her to show Mr. O'Donnell the miniature of Adiante. She had
often thought that her uncle regretted his rejection of Philip.
It appeared so to her now, though not by any consecutive process of
reasoning. She went to fetch the miniature, and gazing on it, she tried
to guess at Mr. O'Donnell's thoughts when doing the same; for who so
inflammable as he? And who, woman or man, could behold this lighted
face, with the dark raised eyes and abounding auburn tresses, where the
contrast of colours was in itself thrilling, and not admire, or more,
half worship, or wholly worship? She pitied the youth: she fancied that
he would not continue so ingenuously true to his brother's love of
Adiante after seeing it; unless one might hope that the light above
beauty distinguishing its noble classic lines, and the energy of
radiance, like a morning of chivalrous promise, in the eyes, would subdue
him to distant admiration. These were her flitting thoughts under the