have written a more ill-advised and
injudicious letter than the above to Miss Bruce.

CHAPTER XI

IN THE SCALES

It was a declaration of war. Of all women in the world--and this is
saying a great deal--Maud was perhaps the least disposed to accept
anything like usurpation, or assumption of undue authority, especially
on the part of one in whose character she had detected an element of
weakness. Tom Ryfe, notwithstanding his capabilities, was a fool, like
most others, where his feelings were touched, and proved it by the
injudicious means he used to attain the end he so desired.

Locked in her own room, she read his letter over and over again, with
a bitter curl of her lip, that denoted hatred, scorn, even contempt.
When a man has been unfortunate enough to excite the last of these
amiable feelings, he should lose no time in decamping, for the game is
wholly and irretrievably lost. Mr. Ryfe would have felt this, could
he have seen the gestures of the woman he loved, while she tore his
letter into shreds--could he have marked the carriage of her haughty
head, the compression of her sweet, resolute lips, the fierce energy
of her white, cruel hands. Maud paced the floor for some half-dozen
turns, opened the window, arranged the bottles on her toilet-table,
the flowers on her chimney-piece, even took a good long look at
herself in the glass, and sat down to think.

For weeks she had been revolving in her mind the necessity of breaking
with Tom Ryfe, the policy of securing position and freedom by an early
marriage. That odious letter decided her; and now it only remained to
make her choice. There are women--and these, though sometimes the
most fascinating, by no means the most trustworthy of their sex--who
possess over mankind a mesmeric influence, almost akin to witchcraft.
Without themselves feeling deeply, perhaps for the very reason that
they do _not_, they are capable of exercising a magic sway over those
with whom they come in contact; and while they attract more admirers
than they know what to do with, are seldom very fortunate in their
selection, or happy in their eventual lot. Miss Bruce was one of these
witches, far more mischievous than the old conventional hags we used
to burn under the sapient government of our first Stuart, and she knew
a deal better than any old woman who ever mounted a broom-stick the
credulity of her victims, the dangerous power of her spells. These she
had lately been using