“That’s some comfort,” said Medora. “They smart most who smart last, I reckon. All the same it’s a blackguard thing on his part.” “The law moves a lot slower than human passion,” he explained, “and though we say hard speeches against it, there is some advantage in a machine that can’t be got to gallop as fast as man’s hate. It may happen that, as time goes on, he’ll come to see that it’s a very unmanly thing to talk about damages, because when it comes to that, what price the damage he inflicted on your heart and nature? Many a woman would have gone down under the persecution, and it was only your own fine spirit and bed-rock pluck and courage that kept you from doing so.” Medora approved these opinions, for praise was her favourite food, and had Kellock understood the powers of flattery, he had always succeeded in calming her tempests and exacting patience and obedience. But he loved her and his love saw her in roseal light as a rule. He forgave her little turpitudes and bitternesses and ebullitions, for was it not natural that one who had so cruelly suffered should sometimes betray those human weaknesses from which none is free? And for her, if the man had only been a husband to her, nothing on earth would have shaken her resolution, or weakened her will power. But that he was not, and her state of widowhood proved exceedingly painful to one of Medora’s sanguine temperament, though this was the last thing in her heart she could confess to Kellock. She panted in fact for a lover sometimes; yet the consciousness that Jordan never panted for anything of the sort made it impossible to hint at such a human weakness. She found the line of least resistance was humble surrender to Kellock’s high qualities. She abased her spirit at thought of his sacrifice and really saw aright in the question of his love for her. About that she could not make any mistake, for she had a mind quick enough in sundry particulars and sufficiently realised that she had won a man who would never fail her—a tower of strength—even though the tower threw rather a heavy shadow. Her own nature was subdued to what it had to work in; she wandered far from herself under these excitations. She was, indeed, so little herself that she did not want to be herself any more. But that ambition could not last. She felt herself moving sometimes—the love of laughter and pleasure, the need for stimulus, the cry for something to anticipate with joy. There was no room for these delights, at any rate at present, in the purview of Kellock. He continued solemn and staid, patient and wise, sometimes quite inscrutable. He was magnificent, but not life—as Medora saw life. Living with Jordan almost suggested living in church; and church never had been Medora’s life, but rather an occasional interlude, depending for its charm on the clothes she was wearing at the time. She became a good deal depressed at this season and wept many secret tears.