nt further mischief. And who
was guilty? she. Her heart clamoured of her guilt to waken a cry of
innocence. A disdainful pity for the superb young savage just made
ludicrous, relieved him of blame, implacable though he was. He was
nothing; an accident--a fool. But he might become a terrible instrument
of punishment. The thought of that possibility gave it an aspect of
retribution, under which her cry of innocence was insufferable in its
feebleness. It would have been different with her if Beauchamp had taken
advantage of her fever of anxiety, suddenly appeased by the sight of
him on the evening of his arrival at Tourdestelle after the storm, to
attempt a renewal of their old broken love-bonds. Then she would have
seen only a conflict between two men, neither of whom could claim a more
secret right than the other to be called her lover, and of whom both
were on a common footing, and partly despicable. But Nevil Beauchamp had
behaved as her perfect true friend, in the character she had hoped for
when she summoned him. The sense of her guilt lay in the recognition
that he had saved her. From what? From the consequences of delirium
rather than from love--surely delirium, founded on delusion; love had
not existed. She had said to Count Henri, 'You speak to me of love. I
was beloved when I was a girl, before my marriage, and for years I have
not seen or corresponded with the man who loved me, and I have only to
lift my finger now and he will come to me, and not once will he speak
to me of love.' Those were the words originating the wager of the glove.
But what of her, if Nevil Beauchamp had not come?

Her heart jumped, and she blushed ungovernably in his face,--as if he
were seeing her withdraw her foot from the rock's edge, and had that
instant rescued her. But how came it she had been so helpless? She could
ask; she could not answer.

Thinking, talking to her heart, was useless. The deceiver simply feigned
utter condemnation to make partial comfort acceptable. She burned to do
some act of extreme self-abasement that should bring an unwonted degree
of wrath on her externally, and so re-entitle her to consideration in
her own eyes. She burned to be interrogated, to have to weep, to be
scorned, abused, and forgiven, that she might say she did not deserve
pardon. Beauchamp was too English, evidently too blind, for the
description of judge-accuser she required; one who would worry her
without mercy, until-disgraced by the exces