“Oh, my hair—how heavy it is!” she muttered, and began pulling out the hairpins until the whole heavy mass fell about her and was caught by the wind, which shrieked with delight at its prize. “Ah, that’s better! Well—now, this duty! After all, it’s only sheer justice. I must, must, must face it! If only an earthquake would come into our lives, if I were dying or Humphrey mortally wounded, or if some catastrophe could fall on us, in the general shock and upheaval something might snap in me, some undiscovered spring might burst up and I might feel as duty demands! But in this everyday existence, in this flat country, among the flatter squires and squiresses, nothing ever happens, no one dies, no one gets a mortal wound, there is never a sign of an earthquake of any description, and yet this duty stands out as clear and as aggressive as ever.” A strand of her long hair got caught in a nail in the fence, she lingered over the disentangling of it, then she turned to Bran and had a little talk with him, but the patient love in his eyes vexed her. “Go!” she said, giving him a little shove with her foot, “go! You look like that other woman! Oh, this duty, this duty! Well, I will make one solitary conscientious try at it, I will begin this very day!” She drew a long breath. “Touches and caresses and things of that sort bring thrills and shakes and trembles and flushes, every female novelist assures one of that fact. Well, I must practise touches and such, and hope for results; also, I must not let myself shiver and feel sick when I in my turn get them bestowed upon me. I wish to goodness I had thought of all this before, it would have been far easier to have begun right from the first.” She suddenly hid her face in her muff. “How awful that was, how awful! oh!—gr—” She began to drum her feet with some slight violence on the lower rail of the fence and she beat her hands together—“to keep them warm,” she assured herself. “That picture person must be put down and this, this,” she whispered, taking her face with a sudden soft pathos between her hands, “this must be brought forward, made inevitable, so to speak; then, then, perhaps, with time and custom the other will be allowed to rest, and—rot!” she cried sharply, lifting her face and turning it again to the blast. “Ugh! how vulgar I am, that painted creature demoralizes me altogether! Ah, there comes Humphrey, walking and leading his horse, I will call him and launch out on my duty. Look at him, it’s a wonder I can say ‘No,’ to that ‘pulse’s magnificent come and go!’ I can though, it doesn’t move me the eighth of an inch.” She stood up on the fence and waved her handkerchief to him. “Now, enter duty, exit vague speculation!” she cried with a laugh, as she jumped off the fence. CHAPTER XXIX.