Page:The Semi-attached Couple.djvu/207

 "For it so falls out, That what we have we prize not to the worth While we enjoy it, but, being lack'd and lost. Why, then we reach its value ; then we find The virtue that possession did not show us While it was ours. So did it fare with Claudio."

And so was it beginning to fare with Helen. Moreover, she had not the same timidity in writing to her husband that she had felt in speaking to him; and the natural playfulness of her disposition sometimes broke out in her letters with far less restraint than she had felt in his actual presence. He too wrote to her openly, and she seemed to herself to grow better acquainted with him by writing than she had by words. Then she became curious to know what her own family thought of her position; how much Beaufort had observed at St. Mary's, and how much of the result of his observations he might have imparted to his mother. But in this respect she was soon reassured. Lady Eskdale had been dorlotée through a prosperous life into a quiet belief that everything was for the best; and well might she think so, for she had had the best of everything; and she could not imagine for a moment that her daughters were not to be as happy as she had been in their married lives; or happier, inasmuch as she thought them more perfect than herself Therefore she merely lamented over dear Teviot's absence as a misfortune rendered endurable because it must be short; and she admired Helen more than ever for submitting with apparent fortitude to such a heavy trial. Lord Eskdale had the real manly political feeling about it. He would have thought it the height of absurdity if Helen had undertaken a voyage at that season, and with the prospect of such a short stay; and his cares turned solely on the success of Lord Teviot's negotiation, and the effect it might have on parties at home and abroad. And as he was in the habit every session of speaking—his enemies called it