 by degrees, in spite of pride, to the knowledge
that she was engaged in a struggle with him; and that he was the stronger; - it
might be, the worthier: she thought him the handsomer. He throve to the light of
day, and she spun a silly web that meshed her in her intricacies. Her intuition
of Emma's wishes led to this; he was constantly before her. She tried to laugh
at the image of the concrete cricketer, half-flannelled, and red of face: the
lucky calculator, as she named him to Emma, who shook her head, and sighed. The
abstract, healthful and powerful man, able to play besides profitably working,
defied those poor efforts. Consequently, at once she sent up a bubble to the
skies, where it became a spheral realm, of far too fine an atmosphere for men to
breathe in it; and thither she transported herself at will, whenever the
contrast, with its accompanying menace of a tyrannic subjugation, overshadowed
her. In the above, the kingdom composed of her shattered romance of life and her
present aspirings, she was free and safe. Nothing touched her there - nothing
that Redworth did. She could not have admitted there her ideal of a hero. It was
the sublimation of a virgin's conception of life, better fortified against the
enemy. She peopled it with souls of the great and pure, gave it illimitable
horizons, dreamy nooks, ravishing landscapes, melodies of the poets of music.
Higher and more celestial than the Salvatore, it was likewise, now she could
assure herself serenely, independent of the horrid blood-emotions. Living up
there, she had not a feeling.
    The natural result of this habit of ascending to a superlunary home, was the
loss of an exact sense of how she was behaving below. At the Berkshire mansion,
she wore a supercilious air, almost as icy as she accused the place of being.
Emma knew she must have seen in the library a row of her literary ventures,
exquisitely bound; but there was no allusion to the books. Mary Paynham's
portrait of Mrs. Warwick hung staring over the fireplace, and was criticized, as
though its occupancy of that position had no significance.
    »He thinks she has a streak of genius,« Diana said to Emma.
    »It may be shown in time,« Emma replied, for a comment on the work. »He
should know, for the Spanish pictures are noble acquisitions.«
    »They are, doubtless, good investments.«
    He had been foolish enough to
