rupt me again, if you please."

And the good-tempered _chaperon_ went away, thinking to herself that
perhaps she had done wrong in interrupting the _tete-a-tete_.

"Still I did it for the best," she said to herself; "and servants will
talk."

Philippa L'Estrange did not move. Lady Peters thought she spoke in a
calm, proud voice. She would have been surprised could she have seen the
beautiful face all wet with tears; for, Philippa had laid her head on
the cold stone, and was weeping such tears as women weep but once in
life. She sat there not striving to subdue the tempest of emotion that
shook her, giving full vent to her passion of grief, stretching out her
hands and crying to her lost love.

It was all over now. She had stepped down from the proud height of her
glorious womanhood to ask for his love, and he had told her that he had
none to give her. She had thrown aside her pride, her delicacy. She had
let him read the guarded secret of her heart, only to hear his
reply--that she was not his ideal of womanhood. She had asked for
bread--he had given her a stone. She had lavished her love at his
feet--he had coolly stepped aside. She had lowered her pride,
humiliated herself, all in vain.

"No woman," she said to herself, "would ever pardon such a slight or
forgive such a wrong."

At first she wept as though her heart would break--tears fell like rain
from her eyes, tears that seemed to burn as they fell; then after a time
pride rose and gained the ascendancy. She, the courted, beautiful woman,
to be so humiliated, so slighted! She, for whose smile the noblest in
the land asked in vain, to have her almost offered love so coldly
refused! She, the very queen of love and beauty, to be so spurned!

When the passion of grief had subsided, when the hot angry glow of
wounded pride died away, she raised her face to the night-skies.

"I swear," she said, "that I will be revenged--that I will take such
vengeance on him as will bring his pride down far lower than he has
brought mine. I will never forgive him. I have loved him with a devotion
passing the love of woman. I will hate more than I have loved him. I
would have given my life to make him happy. I now consecrate it to
vengeance. I swear to take such revenge on him as shall bring the name
of Arleigh low indeed."

And that vow she intended to keep.

"If ever I forget what has passed here," she said to herself, "may
Heaven forget me!"

To her servants she had nev