other then and there, and never through life have
swerved from that pledge! For some of the goodness which Rex believed in was
there. Goodness is a large, often a prospective word; like harvest, which at one
stage when we talk of it lies all underground, with an indeterminate future: is
the germ prospering in the darkness? at another, it has put forth delicate green
blades, and by-and-by the trembling blossoms are ready to be dashed off by an
hour of rough wind or rain. Each stage has its peculiar blight, and may have the
healthy life choked out of it by a particular action of the foul land which
rears or neighbours it, or by damage brought from foulness afar.
    »Anna had got it into her head that you would want to ride after the hounds
this morning,« said Rex, whose secret associations with Anna's words made this
speech seem quite perilously near the most momentous of subjects.
    »Did she?« said Gwendolen, laughingly. »What a little clairvoyante she is!«
    »Shall you?« said Rex, who had not believed in her intending to do it if the
elders objected, but confided in her having good reasons.
    »I don't know. I can't tell what I shall do till I get there. Clairvoyantes
are often wrong: they foresee what is likely. I am not fond of what is likely;
it is always dull. I do what is unlikely.«
    »Ah, there you tell me a secret. When once I knew what people in general
would be likely to do, I should know you would do the opposite. So you would
have come round to a likelihood of your own sort. I shall be able to calculate
on you. You couldn't surprise me.«
    »Yes, I could. I should turn round and do what was likely for people in
general,« said Gwendolen, with a musical laugh.
    »You see you can't escape some sort of likelihood. And contradictoriness
makes the strongest likelihood of all. You must give up a plan.«
    »No, I shall not. My plan is to do what pleases me.« (Here should any young
lady incline to imitate Gwendolen, let her consider the set of her head and
neck: if the angle there had been different, the chin protrusive and the
cervical vertebræ a trifle more curved in their position, ten to one Gwendolen's
words would have had a jar in them for the sweet-natured Rex. But everything odd
in her speech