only equaled by his devotion to her. And when the last great test of his
own life came, how she stood by him!--through those terrible days of the
Land League struggle, when, as Chief Secretary for Ireland, Forster
carried his life in his hand month after month, to be worn out finally
by the double toil of Parliament and Ireland, and to die just before Mr.
Gladstone split the Liberal party in 1886, by the introduction of the
Home Rule Bill, in which Forster would not have followed him.

I shall, however, have something to say later on in these Reminiscences
about those tragic days. To those who watched Mrs. Forster through them,
and who knew her intimately, she was one of the most interesting figures
of that crowded time. Few people, however, outside the circle of her
kindred, knew her intimately. She was, of course, in the ordinary social
and political world, both before and after her husband's entrance upon
office, and admission to the Cabinet; dining out and receiving at home;
attending Drawing-rooms and public functions; staying at country houses,
and invited to Windsor, like other Ministers' wives, and keenly
interested in all the varying fortunes of Forster's party. But though
she was in that world, she was never truly of it. She moved through it,
yet veiled from it, by that pure, unconscious selflessness which is the
saint's gift. Those who ask nothing for themselves, whose whole strength
is spent on affections that are their life, and on ideals at one with
their affections, are not easily popular, like the self-seeking,
parti-colored folk who make up the rest of us; who flatter, caress, and
court, that we in our turn may be flattered and courted. Their
gentleness masks the indomitable soul within; and so their fellows are
often unaware of their true spiritual rank.

It is interesting to recall the instinctive sympathy with which a nature
so different from Charlotte Bronte's as that of Arnold's eldest