would not appear; but this she did
not whisper now. Instead she pretended confidence and said, "I knew
you'd come!"

He responded with fair ardour and tried to banish his grievances against
her. He assured her that all her alarm and tribulation were not his
fault, but her own; and her responsive agreement and servile tact, by
its self-evidence defeated its own object and fretted the man's nerves,
despite his kindly feelings. For Sabina, in her unspeakable thankfulness
at the turn of events, sank from herself and was obsequious. When they
met he kissed her and presently, holding his hand, she kissed it. She
heaped blame upon herself and praised his magnanimity; she presented the
ordinary phenomena of a happy release from affliction and fear; but her
intense humility was far from agreeable to Raymond, since its very
accentuation served to show his own recent actions in painful colours.

He told her what his aunt was going to do; and where a subtler mind had
held its peace, Sabina erred again and praised Miss Ironsyde. In truth,
she was not at her best to-night and her excitement acted unfavourably
on Raymond. He fought against his own emotions, and listened to her
high-strung chatter and plans for the future. A torrent of blame had
better suited the contrite mood in which she met him; but she took the
blame on her own shoulders, and in her relief said things sycophantic
and untrue.

He told her almost roughly to stop.

"For God's sake don't blackguard yourself any more," he said. "Give me a
chance. It's for me to apologise to you, surely. I knew perfectly well
you meant nothing, and I ought to have had more imagination and not
given you any cause to be nervous. I frightened you, and if a woman's
frightened, of course, she's not to be blamed for what she does, any
more than a man's to be blamed for what he does when he's drunk."

This, however, she would not allow.

"If I had trusted you, and known you could not do wrong, and remembered
what you said when I told you about the child--then all this would have
been escaped. And God knows I did trust you at the bottom of my heart
all the time."

She talked on and the man tired of it and, looking far ahead, perceived
that his life must be shared for ever with a nature only now about to be
revealed to him. He had seen the best of her; but he had never seen the
whole truth of her. He knew she was excitable and passionate; but the
excitation and passion had all been displa