He bowed. 'I will fetch it,' he said magnanimously. Her own box was brought from his room. She then consented to look womanly at the Ormont jewels, over which the battle; whereof she knew nothing, and nothing could be told her, had been fought in her interests, for her sovereign pleasure.
She looked and admired. They were beautiful jewels the great emerald was wonderful, and there were two rubies to praise. She excused herself for declining to put the circlet for the pendant round her neck, or a glittering ring on her finger. Her remarks were encomiums, not quite so cold as those of a provincial spinster of an ascetic turn at an exhibition of the world's flycatcher gewgaws. He had divided Aminta from the Countess of Ormont, and it was the wary Aminta who set a guard on looks and tones before the spectacle of his noble bounty, lest any, the smallest, payment of the dues of the countess should be demanded. Rightly interpreting him to be by nature incapable of asking pardon, or acknowledging a wrong done by him, however much he might crave exemption from blame and seek for peace, she kept to her mask of injury, though she hated unforgivingness; and she felt it little, she did it easily, because her heart was dead to the man. My lord's hand touched her on her shoulder, propitiatingly in some degree, in his dumb way.
Offended women can be emotional to a towering pride, that bends while it assumes unbendingness: it must come to their sensations, as it were a sign of humanity in the majestic, speechless king of beasts; and they are pathetically melted, abjectly hypocritical; a nice confusion of sentiments, traceable to a tender bosom's appreciation of strength and the perceptive compassion for its mortality.
In a case of the alienated wife, whose blood is running another way, no foul snake's bite is more poisonous than that indicatory touch, however simple and slight. My lord's hand, lightly laid on Aminta's shoulder, became sensible of soft warm flesh stiffening to the skeleton.
ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
A bird that won't roast or boil or stew
Acting is not of the high class which conceals the art
Ah! we fall into their fictions
Bad luck's not repeated every day Keep heart for the good
Began the game of Pull
By nature incapable of asking pardon
Consciousness of some guilt when vowing itself innocent
Having contracted the fatal habit of irony
He had to shake up wrath over his grievances
Her vehement fighting against facts
His aim to win the woman acknowledged no obstacle in the means
His restored sense of possession
How to compromise the matter for the sake of peace?
I could be in love with her cruelty, if only I had her near me
Men who believe that there is a virtue in imprecations
Not men of brains, but the men of aptitudes
Not the indignant and the frozen, but the genially indifferent
One is a fish to her hook; another a moth to her light
One night, and her character's gone
Passion added to a bowl of reason makes a sophist's mess
Policy seems to petrify their minds
Rage of a conceited schemer tricked
Respect one another's affectations
To time and a wife it is no disgrace for a man to bend
Uncommon unprogressiveness
When duelling flourished on our land, frail women powerful
Where heart weds mind, or nature joins intellect
With what little wisdom the world is governed
[The End]