time, luxurious yachting, my friend, will encounter other reefs and breakers
than briny ocean's! Capital, whereat Diana Warwick aimed her superbest sneer,
has its instant duties. She theorized on the side of poverty, and might do so:
he had no right to be theorizing on the side of riches. Across St. George's
Channel, the cry for humanity in Capital was an agony. He ought to be there,
doing, not cogitating. The post of Irish Secretary must be won by real service
founded on absolute local knowledge. Yes, and sympathy, if you like; but
sympathy is for proving, not prating. ...
    These were the meditations of a man in love; veins, arteries, headpiece in
love, and constantly brooding at a solitary height over the beautiful coveted
object; only too bewildered by her multifarious evanescent feminine evasions, as
of colours on a ruffled water, to think of pouncing: for he could do nothing to
soften, nothing that seemed to please her: and all the while, the motive of her
mind impelled him in reflection beyond practicable limits: even pointing him to
apt quotations! Either he thought within her thoughts, or his own were at her
disposal. Nor was it sufficient for him to be sensible of her influence, to
restrain the impetus he took from her. He had already wedded her morally, and
much that he did, as well as whatever he debated, came of Diana; more than if
they had been coupled, when his downright practical good sense could have
spoken. She held him suspended, swaying him in that posture; and he was not a
whit ashamed of it. The beloved woman was throned on the very highest of the
man.
    Furthermore, not being encouraged, he had his peculiar reason for delay,
though now he could offer her wealth. She had once in his hearing derided the
unpleasant hiss of the ungainly English matron's title of Mrs. There was no harm
in the accustomed title, to his taste; but she disliking it, he did the same, on
her special behalf; and the prospect, funereally draped, of a title
sweeter-sounding to her ears, was above his horizon. Bear in mind, that he
underwent the reverse of encouragement. Any small thing to please her was
magnified, and the anticipation of it nerved the modest hopes of one who deemed
himself and any man alive deeply her inferior.
    Such was the mood of the lover condemned to hear another malignant scandal
defiling the name of the woman he worshipped. Sir Lukin Dunstane, extremely
hurried,