It
naturally shocked her. She felt, as she had never felt before, how
entirely right her father had been in insisting on her resistance to an
attachment which was unworthy of her. So far, but no farther, her
conscience yielded to its own conviction of what was just. But the one
unassailable vital force in this world is the force of love. It may
submit to the hard necessities of life; it may acknowledge the
imperative claims of duty; it may be silent under reproach, and
submissive to privation--but, suffer what it may, it is the
master-passion still; subject to no artificial influences, owning no
supremacy but the law of its own being. Iris was above the reach of
self-reproach, when her memory recalled the daring action which had
saved Lord Harry at the milestone. Her better sense acknowledged Hugh
Mountjoy's superiority over the other man--but her heart, her perverse
heart, remained true to its first choice in spite of her. She made an
impatient excuse and went out alone to recover her composure in the
farm-house garden.
The hours of the evening passed slowly.
There was a pack of cards in the house; the women tried to amuse
themselves, and failed. Anxiety about Arthur preyed on the spirits of
Miss Henley and Mrs.
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