"You don't know what you are talking about!" said Jessie, angrily. "Certainly, you are not much like other women. You are a piece of icy propriety--your love is a kind of milk-and-watery sentiment, which would never lead you very far astray. I can fancy you behaving somewhat in the style of Werther's Charlotte--who is, to my mind, one of the most detestable women in fiction. Yes! Goethe has created two women who are the opposite poles of feeling--Gretchen and Lottie--and I would stake my faith that Gretchen the fallen has a higher place in heaven than Lottie the impeccable. I hate such dull purity, which is always lined with selfishness. The lover may slay himself in his anguish--but she--yes--Thackeray has said it--she goes on cutting bread and butter!" Jessie gave a little hysterical laugh, which she accentuated by a leap from the narrow path where she had been walking to a boulder four or five feet below. "How madly you talk, Jessie. You remind me of Scott's Fenella--and I believe you are almost as wild a creature," said Christabel. "Yes! I suspect there is a spice of gipsy blood in my veins. I am subject to these occasional outbreaks--these revolts against Philistinism. Life is so steeped in respectability--the dull level morality which prompts every man to do what his neighbour thinks he ought to do, rather than to be set in motion by the fire that burns within him. This dread of one's neighbour--this slavish respect for public opinion--reduces life to mere mechanism--society to a stage play." CHAPTER X. "BUT IT SUFFICETH, THAT THE DAY WILL END." Christabel said no word to her husband about that unexpected meeting with Angus Hamleigh. She knew that the name was obnoxious to Leonard, and she shrank from a statement which might provoke unpleasant speech on his part. Mr. Hamleigh would doubtless have left Trevena in a few days--there was no likelihood of any further meeting. The next day was a blank day for the Miss Vandeleurs, who found themselves reduced to the joyless society of their own sex. The harriers met at Trevena at ten o'clock, and thither, after an early breakfast, rode Mr. Tregonell, Captain Vandeleur, and three or four other kindred spirits. The morning was showery and blustery, and it was in vain that Dopsy and Mopsy hinted their desire to be driven to the meet. They were not horsewomen--from no want of pluck or ardour for the chase--but simply from the lack of that material part of the business, horses. Many and many a weary summer day had they paced the path beside Rotten Row, wistfully regarding the riders, and thinking what a seat and what hands they would have had, if Providence had only given them a mount. The people who do not ride are the keenest critics of horsemanship.