ne."

"That is supposed to account for my behaviour?"

She turned her face to him. "Oh, Major blaring! say nothing unworthy of
yourself. That would be a new pain to me."

He bowed. In spite of a prepossessing anger, some little softness crept
through his heart.

"You may conceive that I have dropped my pride," she said. "That is the
case, or my pride is of a better sort."

"Madam, I fully hope and trust," said he.

"And believe," she added, twisting his words to the ironic tongue. "You
certainly must believe that my pride has sunk low. Did I ever speak to
you in this manner before?"

"Not in this manner, I can attest."

"Did I speak at all, when I was hurt?" She betrayed that he had planted a
fresh sting.

"If my recollection serves me," said he, "your self-command was
remarkable."

Mrs. Lovell slackened her pace.

"Your recollection serves you too well, Major Waring. I was a girl. You
judged the acts of a woman. I was a girl, and you chose to put your own
interpretation on whatever I did. You scourged me before the whole army.
Was not that enough? I mean, enough for you? For me, perhaps not, for I
have suffered since, and may have been set apart to suffer. I saw you in
that little church at Warbeach; I met you in the lanes; I met you on the
steamer; on the railway platform; at the review. Everywhere you kept up
the look of my judge. You! and I have been 'Margaret' to you. Major
Waring, how many a woman in my place would attribute your relentless
condemnation of her to injured vanity or vengeance? In those days I
trifled with everybody. I played with fire. I was ignorant of life. I was
true to my husband; and because I was true, and because I was ignorant, I
was plunged into tragedies I never suspected. This is to be what you call
a coquette. Stamping a name saves thinking. Could I read my husband's
temper? Would not a coquette have played her cards differently? There
never was need for me to push my husband to a contest. I never had the
power to restrain him. Now I am wiser; and now is too late; and now you
sit in judgement on me. Why? It is not fair; it is unkind."

Tears were in her voice, though not in her eyes.

Major Waring tried to study her with the coolness of a man who has learnt
to doubt the truth of women; but he had once yearned in a young man's
frenzy of love to take that delicate shape in his arms, and he was not
proof against the sedate sweet face and keen sad ring of the voice.

He spo