throw open again the gates of a beautiful place long closed to the world.
And--without the air of having picked the single instance, but of having
chosen from many--Mrs. Kame added that she had only lately seen Elsie
Shorter, whose admiration for Honora was greater than ever. A sentiment,
Honora reflected a little bitterly, that Mrs. Shorter herself had not
taken the pains to convey. Consistency was not Elsie's jewel.

It must perhaps be added for the sake of enlightenment that since going
to Newport Honora's view of the writer of this letter had changed. In
other words, enlarging ideals had dwarfed her somewhat; it was strictly
true that the lady was a boon companion of everybody. Her Catholicism had
two limitations only: that she must be amused, and that she must not--in
what she deemed the vulgar sense--be shocked.

Honora made several attempts at an answer before she succeeded in saying,
simply, that Hugh was too absorbed in his work of reconstruction of the
estate for them to have house-parties this autumn. And even this was a
concession hard for her pride to swallow. She would have preferred not to
reply at all, and this slightest of references to his work--and hers
--seemed to degrade it. Before she folded the sheet she looked again at
that word "reconstruction" and thought of eliminating it. It was too
obviously allied to "redemption"; and she felt that Mrs. Kame could not
understand redemption, and would ridicule it. Honora went downstairs and
dropped her reply guiltily into the mail-bag. It was for Hugh's sake she
was sending it, and from his eyes she was hiding it.

And, while we are dealing with letters, one, or part of one, from
Honora's aunt, may perhaps be inserted here. It was an answer to one that
Honora had written a few days after her installation at Grenoble, the
contents of which need not be gone into: we, who know her, would neither