great wrong of it, stripped away--leaving it naked, torn from its
setting, without context and so without perspective. Against this not
only her tenderness, but sense of justice, passionately fought. He made
it monstrous and, in that far, untrue, as caricature is untrue, crying
aloud for explanation and analysis. Yet who could explain? Circumstances
of time and place rendered all protest impossible. Nothing could be done,
nothing said. Thus her beloved persons were exposed, judged, condemned
unheard, without opportunity of defence.

And realizing this, realizing redress hopelessly barred, she cowered
down, her head bowed, almost to the level of the marble couch whereon the
figures of knight and lady reposed in the high serenity of love and
death. Happier they than she, poor child, for her pride trailed in the
dust, her darling romance of brother and sister and all the rare pieties
of her heart, defiled by a shameful publicity, exposed for every Tom,
Dick and Harry to paw over and sneer at!

Horror of a crowd, which watches the infliction of some signal disgrace,
tormented her imagination, moreover, to the temporary breaking of her
spirit. Whether that crowd was, in the main, hostile or sympathetic
mattered nothing. The fact that it silently sat there, silently observed,
made every member of it, for the time, her enemy. Even the trusted
servants just behind, comfortable comely Mary, soft Mrs. Cooper, the
devoted Patch, were hateful to her as the rest. Their very loyalty--which
she for no instant doubted--went only to fill the cup of her humiliation
to the brim.

Reginald Sawyer's voice continued; but what he said now she neither heard
nor cared. Her martyrdom could hardly suffer augmentation, the whole
world seemed against her, she set apart, pilloried.--But not alone.
Faircloth was set apart, pilloried, also. And remembering this, her
courage revived. The horror of the crowd lifted. For herself she could
not fight; but for him she could fight, with strength and conviction, out
of the greatness of her love for him, out of her recognition that the
ignominy inflicted upon him was more bitter, more cruel, than any
inflicted upon her. For those who dare, in a moment the worst can turn
best.--She would make play with the freedom which this breach of
convention, of social reticence, of moral discretion, conferred upon her.
The preacher had gone far in demolition. She would go as far, and
further, in construction, in restitut