e answered.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that I hold the strings of his heart in my hands, and I have
only to lift them to draw him back to me--so. No other woman, no
living force, can keep him from me, if I choose to bid him come."

"Supposing that to be so, how about the self-respect you spoke of just
now? Could you bear to take your lover back from the hands of another
woman?"

"That would entirely depend upon the circumstances, and upon what was
just to the other woman."

"You would not then throw him up without question?"

"Lady Bellamy, I may be very ignorant and simple, but I am neither mad
nor a fool. What do you suppose that my life would be worth to me if I
threw Arthur up? If I remained single it would be an aching void, as
it is now, and if I married any other man whilst he still lived, it
would become a daily and shameful humiliation such as I had rather die
than endure."

Lady Bellamy glanced up from under her heavy-lidded eyes; a thought
had evidently struck her, but she did not express it.

"Then I am to tell your cousin George that you will have absolutely
nothing to do with him?"

"Yes, and beg him to cease persecuting me; it is quite useless; if
there were no Arthur and no other man in the world, I would not marry
him. I detest him--I cannot tell you how I detest him."

"It is amusing to hear you talk so, and to think that you will
certainly be Mrs. George Caresfoot within nine months."

"Never," answered Angela, passionately stamping her foot upon the
floor. "What makes you say such horrible things?"

"I reflect," answered Lady Bellamy, with an ominous smile, "that
George Caresfoot has made up his mind to marry you, and that I have
made up mine to help him to do so, and that your will, strong as it
certainly is, is, as compared with our united wills, what a straw is
to a gale. The straw cannot travel against the wind, it _must_ go with
it, and you _must_ marry George Caresfoot. You will as certainly come
to the altar-rails with him as you will to your death-bed. It is
written in your face. Good-bye."

For the first time Angela's courage really gave way as she heard these
dreadful words. She remembered how she herself had called Lady Bellamy
an embodiment of the "Spirit of Power," and now she felt that the
comparison was just. The woman was power incarnate, and her words,
which from anybody else she would have laughed at, sent a cold chill
through her.

"She is a fine creature both