“So,” said Lady Gosstre, “Georgey did not waste her time after all, Charlotte.” What the latter thought was: “She could not handle a sword or fire a pistol. Would I have consented to be mere camp-baggage?” Yet no woman admired Georgiana Ford so much. Disappointment vitiated many of Lady Charlotte's first impulses; and not until strong antagonism had thrown her upon her generosity could she do justice to the finer natures about her. There was full life in her veins; and she was hearing the thirty fatal bells that should be music to a woman, if melancholy music; and she had not lived. Time, that sounded in her ears, as it kindled no past, spoke of no future. She was in unceasing rivalry with all of her sex who had a passion, or a fixed affection, or even an employment. A sense that she was wronged by her fate haunted this lady. Rivalry on behalf of a man she would have held mean--she would have plucked it from her bosom at once. She was simply envious of those who in the face of death could say, “I have lived.” Pride, and the absence of any power of self-inspection, kept her blind to her disease. No recollection gave her boy save of the hours in the hunting-field. There she led gallantly; but it was not because of leading that she exulted. There the quick blood struck on her brain like wine, and she seemed for a time to have some one among the crowns of life. An object--who cared how small?--was ahead: a poor old fox trying to save his brush; and Charlotte would have it if the master of cunning did not beat her. “It's my natural thirst for blood,” she said. She did not laugh as she thought now and then that the old red brush dragging over grey dews toward a yellow yolk in the curdled winter-morning sky, was the single thing that could make her heart throb.