as the singular situation of the
couple of culprits under his admonishing regimen, and the tragic end. My
next two minutes alone with Janet were tempered by it. Only my eagerness
for another term of privacy persuaded her that I was her lover instead
of judge, and then, having made the discovery that a single-minded
gladness animated me in the hope that she and I would travel together
one in body and soul, she surrendered, with her last bit of pride
broken; except, it may be, a fragment of reserve traceable in the
confession that came quaintly after supreme self-blame, when she said
she was bound to tell me that possibly--probably, were the trial to come
over again, she should again act as she had done.

Happily for us both, my wits had been sharpened enough to know that
there is more in men and women than the stuff they utter. And blessed
privilege now! if the lips were guilty of nonsense, I might stop them.
Besides, I was soon to be master upon such questions. She admitted it,
admitting with an unwonted emotional shiver, that absolute freedom could
be the worst of perils. 'For women?' said I. She preferred to say, 'For
girls,' and then 'Yes, for women, as they are educated at present.'
Spice of the princess's conversation flavoured her speech. The signs
unfamiliar about her for me were marks of the fire she had come out of;
the struggle, the torture, the determined sacrifice, through pride's
conception of duty. She was iron once. She had come out of the fire
finest steel.

'Riversley! Harry,' she murmured, and my smile, and word, and squeeze in
reply, brought back a whole gleam of the fresh English morning she had
been in face, and voice, and person.

Was it conceivable that we could go back to Riversley single?

Before that was answered she had to make a statement; and in doing it
she blushed, because it involved Edbury's name, and seemed to involve
her attachment to him; but she paid me the compliment of speaking
it frankly. It was that she had felt herself bound in honour to pay
Edbury's debts. Even by such slight means as her saying, 'Riversley,
Harry,' and my kiss of her fingers when a question of money was in
debate, did we burst aside the vestiges of mutual strangeness, and
recognize one another, but with an added warmth of love. When I pleaded
for the marriage to be soon, she said, 'I wish it, Harry.'

Sentiment you do not obtain from a Damascus blade. She most cordially
despised the ladies who parade and