ised her; she
observed, too, his astonishment, but she also noticed that the short,
powerful face resolutely sealed itself against all expression, and that
the small deep-set eyes seemed purposely veiled; his tact and
discretion evidently forbade any sign of recognition. In gratitude for
this, and for the silence he had hitherto maintained, she gave him one
look from the depth of her glowing, dark eyes--and he was vanquished.

A fire was kindled within him, which burst in flames of colour on his
cheeks; he could no longer collect his thoughts to listen to the
conversation of his brother officers, and he left them. No one could
have thought it strange that he should return home in good time, as he
had already arranged to start early that night by the fast train, in
order to be present the next day, when his father's bones were to be
removed from the Malefactors' graveyard to a tomb of honour in his
native town.

CHAPTER V

We have seen how Mansana bore himself in the funeral procession the
next day, and we know now why he walked behind his father's bier with
that elastic gait, that buoyant and springy step. He had expected to
find in the woman he had insulted, an implacable adversary, and was
prepared to meet her enmity with disdain. But a single glance in the
Corso from the eyes of Theresa Leaney, as she stood there in all her
triumphant brilliancy and beauty, had set up a new image in his soul.
It was the image of Theresa herself as the radiant goddess and mistress
of his being. Before her majestic purity, how false and empty seemed
all the calumnies he had heard! How vulgar and insolent his own
audacious attack upon her! Was _this_ the woman he had had the
effrontery to persecute, to annoy?

He pondered over the mental conditions which could make him capable of
such a profanation. Step by step he traced their development, in his
own harsh experiences of life, as he followed his father's body to the
grave. He traced them back indeed to that father himself, since it was
from him that he had inherited the bitter and perilous self-confidence
which had sunk deep into his heart, and grown and flourished there.
Under such influences he had indulged, to the full, the crude, wilful,
egoism which had made him a law unto himself and his own desires and
impulses the only standard by which he tested his actions, even as his
father had done before him.

How often he had seen his mother we