forth, the Countess threw herself headlong into the enemy's country.
    But, that you may not think too highly of this lady, I must add that the
trivial reason was the exciting cause - as in many great enterprises. This was
nothing more than the simple desire to be located, if but for a day or two, on
the footing of her present rank, in the English country-house of an offshoot of
our aristocracy. She who had moved in the first society of a foreign capital -
who had married a Count, a minister of his sovereign, had enjoyed delicious
high-bred badinage with refulgent ambassadors, could boast the friendship of
duchesses, and had been the amiable receptacle of their pardonable follies; she
who, moreover, heartily despised things English: - this lady experienced thrills
of proud pleasure at the prospect of being welcomed at a third-rate English
mansion. But then, that mansion was Beckley Court. We return to our first
ambitions, as to our first loves: not that they are dearer to us, - quit that
delusion: our ripened loves and mature ambitions are probably closest to our
hearts, as they deserve to be - but we return to them because our youth has a
hold on us which it asserts whenever a disappointment knocks us down. Our old
loves (with the bad natures I know in them) are always lurking to avenge
themselves on the new by tempting us to a little retrograde infidelity. A
schoolgirl in Fallowfield, the tailor's daughter, had sighed for the bliss of
Beckley Court. Beckley Court was her Elysium ere the ardent feminine brain
conceived a loftier summit. Fallen from that attained eminence, she sighed anew
for Beckley Court. Nor was this mere spiritual longing; it had its material
side. At Beckley Court she could feel her foreign rank. Moving with our nobility
as an equal, she could feel that the short dazzling glitter of her career was
not illusory, and had left her something solid; not coin of the realm exactly,
but yet gold. She could not feel this in the Cogglesby saloons, among pitiable
bourgeoises - middle-class people daily soiled by the touch of tradesmen! They
dragged her down. Their very homage was a mockery.
    Let the Countess have due credit for still allowing Evan to visit Beckley
Court to follow up his chance. If Demogorgon betrayed her there, the Count was
her protector: a woman rises to her husband. But a man is what he is, and must
stand upon that. She was positive Evan had committed himself in some manner. As
it did not suit her