e... Oh! if you could know what a net I'm
in, Richard!"

Now at those words, as he looked down on her haggard loveliness, not
divine sorrow but a devouring jealousy sprang like fire in his breast,
and set him rocking with horrid pain. He bent closer to her pale
beseeching face. Her eyes still drew him down.

"Bella! No! no! promise me! swear it!"

"Lost, Richard! lost for ever! give me up!"

He cried: "I never will!" and strained her in his arms, and kissed her
passionately on the lips.

She was not acting now as she sidled and slunk her half-averted head
with a kind of maiden shame under his arm, sighing heavily, weeping,
clinging to him. It was wicked truth.

Not a word of love between them!

Was ever hero in this fashion won?

CHAPTER XXXIX

At a season when the pleasant South-western Island has few attractions
to other than invalids and hermits enamoured of wind and rain, the
potent nobleman, Lord Mountfalcon, still lingered there to the disgust
of his friends and special parasite. "Mount's in for it again," they
said among themselves. "Hang the women!" was a natural sequence. For,
don't you see, what a shame it was of the women to be always kindling
such a very inflammable subject! All understood that Cupid had twanged
his bow, and transfixed a peer of Britain for the fiftieth time: but
none would perceive, though he vouched for it with his most eloquent
oaths, that this was a totally different case from the antecedent ones.
So it had been sworn to them too frequently before. He was as a man
with mighty tidings, and no language: intensely communicative, but
inarticulate. Good round oaths had formerly compassed and expounded
his noble emotions. They were now quite beyond the comprehension of
blasphemy, even when emphasized, and by this the poor lord divinely felt
the case was different. There is something impressive in a great human
hulk writhing under the unutterable torments of a mastery he cannot
contend with, or account for, or explain by means of intelligible words.
At first he took refuge in the depths of his contempt for women. Cupid
gave him line. When he had come to vent his worst of them, the fair face
now stamped on his brain beamed the more triumphantly: so the harpooned
whale rose to the surface, and after a few convulsions, surrendered
his huge length. My lord was in love with Richard's young wife. He gave
proofs of it by burying himself beside her. To her, could she have seen
it, he