She spoke so gently that Mrs. Danvers was going to attempt one of her querulous remonstrances, but she happened to look at the face of her patroness. It wore an expression not often seen there; but she was wise enough to interpret it aright, and to guess that she had gone far enough. It was ever a dangerous experiment to trifle with the Tresilyans when their brows were bent. So she launched into some of her affectionate platitudes and profuse excuses, and under cover of these retreated to her rest. It is a comfort to reflect that she slept very soundly, though she monopolized all the slumber that night that ought to have fallen to Cecil's share. What did Royston Keene think of the events of the evening? As he went down the stairs I am afraid he cursed the chaplain once heartily, but on the whole he was not dissatisfied. At all events, the short walk down to the club completely restored his _sang-froid_, and the last trace of vexation vanished as he entered the card-room and saw the "light of battle" gleam on the haggard face of Armand de Chateaumesnil. CHAPTER XI. There was in Dorade a stout and meritorious elderly widow, who formed a sort of connecting link between the natives and the settlers. English by birth, she had married a Frenchman of fair family and fortune, so that her habits and sympathies attached themselves about equally to the two countries. You do not often find so good a specimen of the hybrid. She gave frequent little _soirees_, which were as pleasant and exciting as such assemblages of heterogeneous elements usually are--that is to say, very moderately so. The two streams flowed on in the same channel, without mingling or losing their characteristics. I fancy the fault was most on our side. We no longer, perhaps, parade Europe with "pride in our port, defiance in our eye;" but still, in our travels, we lose no opportunity of maintaining and asserting our well-beloved dignity, which, if rather a myth and vestige of the past, at home, abroad, is a very stern reality. Have you not seen, at a crowded _table d'hote_, the British mother encompass her daughters with the double bulwark of herself and their staid governess on either flank, so as to avert the contamination which must otherwise have certainly ensued from the close proximity of a courteous white-bearded Graf, or a _fringante_ vicomtesse whose eyes outshone her diamonds? May it ever remain so! Each nation has its vanity and its own peculiar glory, as it has its especial produce. O cotton mills of Manchester! envy not nor emulate the velvet looms of Genoa or Lyons; you are ten times as useful, and a hundredfold more remunerating. What matters it if Damascus guard jealously the secret of her fragrant clouded steel, when Sheffield can turn out efficient sword-blades at the rate of a thousand per hour? _Suum cuique tribuito._ Let others aspire to be popular: be it ours to remain irreproachably and unapproachably respectable.