Worldly honour, this colonel must have meant, for he considered it would have been compromised by a man's refusing to accept a challenge. That "honour" surely was a little lower thing than virtue; a little less pure than the Christianity which all of us profess, and so few believe. Yet there was something at once touching and heroic about it, and in the way this man of the world upheld it. The best of our British chivalry--as chivalry goes--is made up of materials such as these. But is there not a higher morality--a diviner honour? And if so, who is he that can find it? CHAPTER IV. HER STORY. 'Tis over--the weary dinner-party. I can lock myself in here, take off my dress, pull down my hair, clasp my two bare arms one on each shoulder--such a comfortable attitude!--and stare into the fire. There is something peculiar about our fires. Most likely the quantity of fire-wood we use for this region gives them that curious aromatic smell. How, I love fir-trees of any sort in any season of the year! How I used to delight myself in our pine-woods, strolling in and out among the boles of the trees so straight, strong, and unchangeable--grave in summer, and green in winter! How I have stood listening to the wind in their tops, and looking for the fir-cones, wonderful treasures! which they had dropped on the soft dry mossy ground. What glorious fun it was to fill my pinafore--or in more dignified days my black silk apron--with fir-cones; to heap a surreptitious store of them in a corner of the school-room, and burn them, one by one, on the top of the fire. How they did blaze! I think I should almost like to go hunting for fir-cones now. It would be a great deal more amusing than dinner-parties. Why did we give this dinner, which cost so much time, trouble, and money, and was so very dull? At least I thought so. Why should we always be obliged to have a dinner-party when Francis is here? As if he could not exist a week at Rockmount without other people's company than ours! It used not to be so. When I was a child, I remember he never wanted to go anywhere, or have anybody coming here. After study was over (and papa did not keep him very close either), he cared for nothing except to saunter about with Penelope. What a nuisance those two used to be to us younger ones: always sending us out of the room on some pretence, or taking us long walks and losing us, and then--cruellest of all,--keeping us waiting indefinitely for dinner. Always making so much of one another, and taking no notice of us; having little squabbles with one another, and then snubbing us. The great bore of our lives was that love-affair of Francis and Penelope; and the only consolation we had, Lisabel and I, was to plan the wedding, she to settle the bridesmaids' dresses, and I thinking how grand it would be when all is over, and I took the head of the table, the warm place in the room, permanently, as Miss Johnston.