id the Professor. "Men
are as sensitive, in some respects, as women."

"So much the better."

"Then do you think it quite just to punish one man for the sin of
another?"

"No; but there is a deadly feud between the sexes: it is a hereditary
vendetta: the duty of vengeance is passed on from generation to
generation."

"Oh, Mrs. Temperley!" Lady Engleton's tone was one of reproach.

"Yes, it is vindictive, I know; one does not grow tender towards the
enemy at the grave of Ellen Jervis."

"At least, there were _two_ sinners, not only one."

"Only one dies of a broken heart."

"But why attempt revenge?"

"Oh, a primitive instinct. And anything is better than this meek
endurance, this persistent heaping of penalties on the scapegoat."

"No good ever came of mere revenge, however," said Professor Theobald.

"Sometimes that is the only form of remonstrance that is listened to,"
said Hadria. "When people have the law in their own hands and Society at
their back, they can afford to be deaf to mere verbal protest."

"As for the child," said Lady Engleton, "she will be in no little danger
of a fate like her mother's."

Hadria's face darkened.

"At least then, she shall have some free and happy hours first; at least
she shall not be driven to it by the misery of moral starvation,
starvation of the affections. She shall be protected from the solemn
fools--with sawdust for brains and a mechanical squeaker for heart--who,
on principle, cut off from her mother all joy and all savour in life,
and then punished her for falling a victim to the starved emotional
condition to which they had reduced her."

"The matter seems complex," said Lady Engleton, "and I don't see how
revenge comes in."

"It is a passion that has never been eradicated. Oh, if I could but find
that man!"

"A man is a hard thing to punish,--unless he is in love with one."

"Well, let him be in love!" cried Hadria fiercely.

CHAPTER XXIX.

The sound of music stole over the gardens of the Priory, at sunset. It
was the close of one of the most exquisite days of Spring. A calm had
settled over the country with the passing away of the sun-god. His
attendant winds and voices had been sacrificed on his funeral pyre.

Two figures sat on the terrace by the open window of the drawing-room,
listening to the utterance, in music, of a tumultuous, insurgent spirit.
In Professor Fortescue, the musical passion was deeply rooted, as it is
in most profo