There was desperation, almost ferocity, in the answer; she was moved
and shaken by it--not to fear, for fear was not in her nature, but to
something of awe, and something of the despairing hopelessness that was
in him.

"Lord Royallieu," she said slowly, as if the familiar name were some tie
between them, some cause of excuse for these, the only love words she
had ever heard without disdain and rejection--"Lord Royallieu, it is
unworthy of you to take this advantage of an interview which I sought,
and sought for your own sake. You pain me, you wound me. I cannot tell
how to answer you. You speak strangely, and without warrant."

He stood mute and motionless before her, his head sunk on his chest.
He knew that she rebuked him justly; he knew that he had broken through
every law he had prescribed himself, and that he had sinned against the
code of chivalry which should have made her sacred from such words while
they were those he could not utter, nor she hear, except in secrecy and
shame. Unless he could stand justified in her sight and in that of all
men, he had no right to seek to wring out tenderness from her regret and
from her pity. Yet all his heart went out to her in one irrepressible
entreaty.

"Forgive me, for pity's sake! After to-night I shall never look upon
your face again."

"I do forgive," she said gently, while her voice grew very sweet. "You
endure too much already for one needless pang to be added by me. All I
wish is that you had never met me, so that this last, worst thing had
not come unto you!"

A long silence fell between them; where she leaned back among her
cushions, her face was turned from him. He stood motionless in the
shadow, his head still dropped upon his breast, his breathing loud and
slow and hard. To speak of love to her was forbidden to him, yet the
insidious temptation wound close and closer round his strength. He had
only to betray the man he had sworn to protect, and she would know his
innocence, she would hear his passion; he would be free, and she--he
grew giddy as the thought rose before him--she might, with time, be
brought to give him other tenderness than that of friendship. He seemed
to touch the very supremacy of joy; to reach it almost with his hand; to
have honors, and peace, and all the glory of her haughty loveliness,
and all the sweetness of her subjugation, and all the soft delights of
passions before him in their golden promise, and he was held back in
bands of i