ad
come. Contrasting this meeting with the last occasion when they had
stood together beside this grave, had he not ground for self-applause?
He remembered so well that unpleasant episode. It was Hadria who stood
_then_ in the more powerful position. He had actually feared to meet her
eye. He remembered how bitterly she had spoken, of her passion for
revenge, of the relentless feud between man and woman. They had
discussed the question of vengeance; he had pointed out its futility,
and Hadria had set her teeth and desired it none the less. Lady Engleton
had reminded her of a woman's helplessness if she places herself in
opposition to a man, for whom all things are ordered in the society that
he governs; her only chance of striking a telling blow being through his
passions. If he were in love with her, _then_ there might be some hope
of making him wince. And Hadria, with a fierce swiftness had accepted
the condition, with a mixture of confidence in her own power of rousing
emotion, if she willed, and of scorn for the creature who could be
appealed to through his passions, but not through his sense of justice.
That she might herself be in that vulnerable condition, had not appeared
to strike her as possible. It was a challenge that he could not but
accept. She attracted him irresistibly. From the first moment of
meeting, he had felt her power, and recognized, at the same time, the
strange spirit of enmity that she seemed to feel towards him, and to
arouse in him against her. He felt the savage in him awake, the desire
of mere conquest. Long had he waited and watched, and at last he had
seen her flush and tremble at his approach; and as if to make his
victory more complete and insolent, it was at _this_ grave that she was
to confess herself ready to lose the world for his sake! Yes; and she
should understand the position of affairs to the full, and consent
nevertheless!

Her adoption of the child had added to his triumph. He could not think
of it without a sense of something humourous in the relation of events.
If ever Fate was ironical, this was the occasion! He felt so sure of
Hadria to-day, that he was swayed by an overpowering temptation to
reveal to her the almost comic situation. It appealed to his sense of
the absurd, and to the savagery that lurked, like a beast of prey, at
the foundation of his nature. Her evident emotion when he arrived
yesterday afternoon and all through his visit, her agitation to-day, at
the