and constant as the magnet to its poles.
It was still the steps of Éloise that Marlboro' haunted. Yesterday, he brought songs to teach her, and among them the chant to which long ago they had once listened together in the old Norman cathedral; to-morrow, he would show her a singular deposit on the beach, of rare silvery shells underflushed with rose, kept there over a tide for her eyes; to-day, he treated her to politics condensed into a single phrase whose essence told all his philosophy:—"The great error in government," he said, "is also inversely the great want in marriage: in government, individuality should be supreme; in marriage, lost. In government, this error is a triple-headed monster: centralization, consolidation, union."
Mr. St. George heard him, and paused a moment before them, one evening, as Marlboro' thus harangued Éloise.
"Consolidation? Centralization?" said he. "The very things we all oppose."
"Nullification is a good solvent."
"A ghost that is laid. There's a redder phantom than that on the horizon, man!"
"What are you talking about, politics or marriage?"
"God forbid that I should soil a lady's ears with the first!" said Mr. St. George, bowing to Éloise; "and as to the last,—I'll none of it!"
And after Mr. Marlboro' had gone that night, as Éloise was about to ascend to her own rooms, Mr. St. George came along again, and, lightly taking the candle, held up the tiny flame before her face.
"What has that contrabandista been saying to you?" demanded Mr. St. George.