yed all possible
enjoyment of walks even in the remotest by-paths and woods, for,
supposing Judith to maintain this dog for her annoyance, what sense of
bounds or fairness would constrain her?

A long time passed, however, without sign of the enemy in her remoter
walks; and she had come to feel secure once more and let her dog range
along unleashed, when one day, nothing being further from her
thoughts, Beech's voice came to her ear, tangled in quarrel with
another, and her heart told her that the event so dreaded was upon
them. She ran, with shaking knees, and saw at a glance the worst she
had feared. Celia was not a coward, but a certain permanent sense of
the physical means at her command compelled her to stand helpless,
crying out and beating the air with her hands. Judith, appearing upon
the scene a moment later, white with fright, too, plunged at the
fighters, and having by force of rage and fury of muscle got mastery
over her dog, was with one hand belaboring his big head, while with
the other twisted in his collar she shook and choked him. She stopped,
suddenly without strength, and looked over at Celia, who, trembling
from head to foot, was clinging to Beech. As their glances met,
concentrated indignation shot from Celia's eyes. "I hope you are
satisfied!" she said.

Judith, after a moment's pause, which appeared owing to amazement,
flourished in the air, for Celia to see, a bitten and bleeding hand,
and said in her harsh, impudent laugh, "I hope _you_ are!" while yet
Celia could not fail to remark that pain or some other emotion was
forcing tears into her eyes. Too angry to be in the least moved by
them, she turned away.

It was only in recollection that she did grudging justice to
Judith's conduct; but the initial wrong and the whole blame of the
occurrence being so signally hers, she felt under no obligation of
acknowledgement. What became of Punch she never inquired. He was
not seen again in those latitudes. The injury received, however,
was of a kind which the tender mistress of Beech was not likely to
remit, and the remembrance of it went to intensify the effect of
scorn with which upon another occasion she met an impulsive tender of
Judith's, prompted by penitence.... And after that there was no
more question between the women of anything but hate to the extent
of their respective capacities.

The reinforcement of ill-will in this case arose from a question of so
innocent and fragile a thing as wil