f the extraordinary merits and the uncertain
fate of the exquisite woman of whom we speak, if I had not been certain
that, partly by my fault, I admit, his attention has been attracted to
her and his--his--his heart engaged."

It was as if some one had poured a bucket of cold water over my head. I
woke up with a great shudder to the acute perception of my own feelings
and of that aristocrat's incredible purpose. How it could have
germinated, grown and matured in that exclusive soil was inconceivable.
She had been inciting her son all the time to undertake wonderful salvage
work by annexing the heiress of Henry Allegre--the woman and the fortune.

There must have been an amazed incredulity in my eyes, to which her own
responded by an unflinching black brilliance which suddenly seemed to
develop a scorching quality even to the point of making me feel extremely
thirsty all of a sudden. For a time my tongue literally clove to the
roof of my mouth. I don't know whether it was an illusion but it seemed
to me that Mrs. Blunt had nodded at me twice as if to say: "You are
right, that's so." I made an effort to speak but it was very poor. If
she did hear me it was because she must have been on the watch for the
faintest sound.

"His heart engaged. Like two hundred others, or two thousand, all
around," I mumbled.

"Altogether different. And it's no disparagement to a woman surely. Of
course her great fortune protects her in a certain measure."

"Does it?" I faltered out and that time I really doubt whether she heard
me. Her aspect in my eyes had changed. Her purpose being disclosed, her
well-bred ease appeared sinister, her aristocratic repose a treacherous
device, her venerable graciousness a mask of unbounded contempt for all
human beings whatever. She was a terrible old woman with those straight,
white wolfish eye-brows. How blind I had been! Those eyebrows alone
ought to have been enough to give her away. Yet they were as beautifully
smooth as her voice when she admitted: "That protection naturally is only
partial. There is the danger of her own self, poor girl. She requires
guidance."

I marvelled at the villainy of my tone as I spoke, but it was only
assumed.

"I don't think she has done badly for herself, so far," I forced myself
to say. "I suppose you know that she began life by herding the village
goats."

In the course of that phrase I noticed her wince just the least bit. Oh,
yes, she winced