She was an adventuress perhaps, and her triumph was an ignoble one; but she was not altogether base. She was prepared to be a good wife to the man whom she had brought to her feet by force of feminine strategy. She did not love Francis Tredethlyn; and indeed she seemed to be made of a sterner stuff than that out of which the women who can love are fashioned. She did not love her affianced husband; but she meant to be as faithful and devoted as the most loving wife in Christendom. If she intended to raise herself upon the platform of her husband’s wealth, she meant that he should mount with her. Already she had lifted him several stages on the social ladder. From the very first her watchful care had saved him from a hundred small solecisms, and in the more intimate relationship of the last few weeks her refining influence had been almost magical in its effects. The good old blood of the Tredethlyns asserted itself, and Julia found her task an easy one. “I don’t want you to be like those Government clerks, and magazine writers, and embryo Q.C.’s,” she said to him sometimes. “I like you to be big and deep-voiced and--just a little clumsy. The Knights-Templars, and Crusaders, and that sort of people, must have been clumsy on account of their armour. I always fancy I hear the clank of spurs when you come into a room: and when you sit in Parliament you must be the soldier’s friend, you know, and make great speeches about rations, and court-martial verdicts, and discipline, and all that sort of thing; and I shall come into the ladies’ gallery, and strain my eyes by peering at you through that horrible grating. You will look so handsome with your head thrown a little back, and your hand in your waistcoat.”