to play upon my love for an only brother, and my desire for
revenge. Was it unnatural?"

Her voice became choked with tears. She paused for a moment or two,
trying to regain some sort of composure. She looked appealingly at him,
almost as if he were her judge. He had allowed her to speak on in her
own vehement, impassioned way, offering no comment, no word of sympathy:
and now, while she paused, trying to swallow down the hot tears that
gushed to her eyes, he waited, impassive and still. The dim, grey light
of early dawn seemed to make his tall form look taller and more rigid.
The lazy, good-natured face looked strangely altered. Marguerite,
excited, as she was, could see that the eyes were no longer languid,
the mouth no longer good-humoured and inane. A curious look of intense
passion seemed to glow from beneath his drooping lids, the mouth was
tightly closed, the lips compressed, as if the will alone held that
surging passion in check.

Marguerite Blakeney was, above all, a woman, with all a woman's
fascinating foibles, all a woman's most lovable sins. She knew in a
moment that for the past few months she had been mistaken: that this
man who stood here before her, cold as a statue, when her musical voice
struck upon his ear, loved her, as he had loved her a year ago: that his
passion might have been dormant, but that it was there, as strong, as
intense, as overwhelming, as when first her lips met his in one long,
maddening kiss. Pride had kept him from her, and, woman-like, she meant
to win back that conquest which had been hers before. Suddenly it seemed
to her that the only happiness life could every hold for her again would
be in feeling that man's kiss once more upon her lips.

"Listen to the tale, Sir Percy," she said, and her voice was low, sweet,
infinitely tender. "Armand was all in all to me! We had no parents, and
brought one another up. He was my little father, and I, his tiny mother;
we loved one another so. Then one day--do you mind me, Sir Percy? the
Marquis de St. Cyr had my brother Armand thrashed--thrashed by his
lacqueys--that brother whom I loved better than all the world! And his
offence? That he, a plebeian, had dared to love the daughter of the
aristocrat; for that he was waylaid and thrashed . . . thrashed like a
dog within an inch of his life! Oh, how I suffered! his humiliation had
eaten into my very soul! When the opportunity occurred, and I was able
to take my revenge, I took it. But I on