He was proud of her bearing on horseback.  She rode well and looked well.  A finer weapon wherewith to strike at a churlish world was never given into the hands of man.  These English may see in her, if they like, that they and their laws and customs are defied.  It does her no hurt, and it hits them a ringing buffet.

Among the cavaliers they passed was Mr. Morsfield.  He rode by slowly.  The earl stiffened his back in returning the salute.  Both that and the gentleman were observed by Aminta.

‘He sees to having good blood under him,’ said the earl.  ’I admired his mount,’ she replied.

Interpreted by the fire of his writing, his features expressed character:  insomuch that a woman could say of another woman, that she admired him and might reasonably do so.  His gaze at her in the presence of her lord was audacious.

He had the defect of his virtue of courage.  Yet a man indisputably possessing courage cannot but have an interesting face—­though one may continue saying, Pity that the eyes are not a little wider apart!  He dresses tastefully; the best English style.  A portrait by a master hand might hand him down to generations as an ancestor to be proud of.  But with passion and with courage, and a bent for snatching at the lion’s own, does he not look foredoomed to an early close?  Her imagination called up a portrait of Elizabeth’s Earl of Essex to set beside him; and without thinking that the two were fraternally alike, she sent him riding away with the face of the Earl of Essex and the shadow of the unhappy nobleman’s grievous fortunes over his head.

But it is inexcuseable to let the mind be occupied recurrently by a man who has not moved the feelings, wicked though it be to have the feelings moved by him.  Aminta rebuked her silly wits, and proceeded to speculate from an altitude, seeing the man’s projects in a singularly definite minuteness, as if the crisis he invoked, the perils he braved, the mute participation he implored of her for the short space until their fate should be decided, were a story sharply cut on metal.  Several times she surprised herself in an interesting pursuit of the story; abominably cold, abominably interested.  She fell upon a review of small duties of the day, to get relief; and among them a device for spiriting away her aunt from the table where Mrs. Lawrence wished to meet Lord Ormont.  It sprang up to her call like an imp of the burning pit.  She saw it ingenious and of natural aspect.  I must be a born intriguer! she said in her breast.  That was hateful; but it seemed worse when she thought of a woman commanding the faculty and consenting to be duped and foiled.  That might be termed despicable; but what if she had not any longer the wish to gain her way with her lord?

Those letters are acting like a kind of poison in me! her heart cried:  and it was only her head that dwelt on the antidote.

CHAPTER XII