e the naughty adventuress!'--Nataly falsified
the thought insurgent at her heart, in adding: 'I do not say I am
blameless.' It was a concession to the circumambient enemy, of whom even
a good friend was apart, and not better than a respectful emissary. The
dearest of her friends belonged to that hostile world. Only Victor, no
other, stood with her against the world. Her child, yes; the love of her
child she had; but the child's destiny was an alien phantom, looking at
her with harder eyes than she had vision of in her family. She did not
say she was blameless, did not affect the thought. She would have wished
to say, for small encouragement she would have said, that her case could
be pleaded.

Colney's features were not inviting, though the expression was not
repellent. She sighed deeply; and to count on something helpful by
mentioning it, reverted to the 'prospect' which there appeared to be.
'Victor speaks of the certainty of his release.'

His release! Her language pricked a satirist's gallbladder. Colney
refrained from speaking to wound, and enjoyed a silence that did it.

'Do you see any possibility?--you knew her,' she said coldly.

'Counting the number of times he has been expecting the release, he is
bound to believe it near at hand.'

'You don't?' she asked: her bosom was up in a crisis of expectation for
the answer: and on a pause of half-a-minute, she could have uttered the
answer herself.

He perceived the insane eagerness through her mask, and despised it,
pitying the woman. 'And you don't,' he said. 'You catch at delusions, to
excuse the steps you consent to take. Or you want me to wear the
blinkers, the better to hoodwink your own eyes. You see it as well as I:
If you enter that house, you have to go through the same as at
Creckholt:--and he'll be the first to take fright.'

'He finds you in tears: he is immensely devoted; he flings up all to
protect "his Nataly."'

'No: you are unjust to him. He would fling up all:'--

'But his Nataly prefers to be dragged through fire? As you please!'

She bowed to her chastisement. One motive in her consultation with him
came of the knowledge of his capacity to inflict it and his honesty in
the act, and a thirst she had to hear the truth loud-tongued from him;
together with a feeling that he was excessive and satiric, not to be read
by the letter of his words: and in consequence, she could bear the lash
from him, and tell her soul that he overdid it, and hav