It is all very well to sacrifice yourself, vow that you will never marry, that no woodbine-bonds of family affection shall be permitted to spring up around you--provided that you stand quite alone. If you have a parent who delights in fleshpots, who holds an honourable situation of which your own heroics may deprive him, it is surely a matter of doubt whether your better part would not be the dusting of household furniture, the warming of slippers, the mending of old stockings, instead of the more picturesque operation of donning plume and helm. What, I wonder, did the parents of Joan of Arc think of their daughter when she abandoned the care of sheep to go a-soldiering? Doreen recognised the objections to her proposed course with a pang, but wavered, searching for an excuse such as should render her desires commendable. She would have liked to go down to posterity as a female Moses. The position of the budding lawgiver at Pharaoh's court was somewhat like her own, save in the important point that he had no father who loved fleshpots. If it might only be permitted for Arthur Wolfe's daughter to wean him from them to better things! But that seemed too good a prospect to be hoped for, so with a sigh she put it from her. As, after the recent skirmish, she reviewed the situation, I grieve to relate she was not sorry for her pertness. My lady had no business to say what she had said, to make rude speeches, and to worry about Shane. The young lady conceived herself bound to speak up boldly in self-defence, to put my lady down on the subject of private liberty, as she often did in the matter of King William. The two ladies started in all things from two opposite poles. That they should clash was inevitable. But she did promise herself to be more prudent in the future for her father's sake; to do what was feasible for the good cause in private, strictly remaining in the background herself, come what might. And this resolution being firmly graven on her mind, she busied herself about fishing-tackle with the placid calm which passed with her for cheerfulness. Meanwhile my lady sat alone in the tapestry-saloon among the faded effigies of departed Crosbies, looking appealingly at them as though they could help her in an extremity. The guiding spring of her life had been pride, which became firmly grafted by marriage in the glory of her husband's lineage. Pride it was which had supported her fainting heart in many a bitter struggle. Black care had thinned her cheek, had pressed crow's-feet about her restless eyes; yet, save for a querulous manner and the peculiar sudden dilation of the pupil which struck us when first we were introduced to the stately countess in '83, there was but little that was unusual on the surface to tell a new acquaintance that the battle which she fought was never-ceasing.