these
things. With her little dusting-brush at her girdle, no eyes that
knew anything would ever take her for aught but a lady. She was just
the wife for Yorke Clayton.

So Edith argued it in her own bosom, adding other wondrous mistakes
to that first mistake she had made. In thinking of it all she counted
herself for nothing, and made believe that she was ugly in all eyes.
She would not allow the man to see as his fancy led him; and could
not bring herself to think that if now the man should change his mind
and offer his hand to Ada, it would be impossible that Ada should
accept it. Nor did she perceive that Ada had not suffered as she had
suffered.

"I wanted to catch you just for one moment," said Yorke Clayton,
running out so as to catch his prey. She had half wished to fly from
him, and had half told herself that any such flight was foolish.

"What is it, Yorke?" she said.

"I think,--I do think that I have at last got Lax upon the hip."

"You are so bloody-minded about Lax."

"What! Are you going to turn round and be merciful?" He was her hero,
and she certainly felt no mercy towards the murderer of her brother;
no mercy towards him who she now thought had planned all the injury
done to her father; no mercy towards him who had thrice fired at her
beloved. This wretched man had struggled to get the blood of him who
was all the world to her; and had been urged on to his black deeds
by no thought, by no feeling, that was not in itself as vile as hell!
Lax was to her a viper so noxious as to be beyond the pale of all
mercy. To crush him beneath the heel of her boot, so as to make an
end of him, as of any other poisonous animal, was the best mercy to
all other human beings. But she had said the word at the spur of the
moment, because she had been instigated by her feelings to gainsay
her hero, and to contradict him, so that he might think that he was
no hero of hers. She looked at him for the moment, and said nothing,
though he held her by the arm. "If you say I am to spare him, I will
spare him."

"No," she answered, "because of your duty."

"Have I followed this man simply as a duty? Have I lain awake
thinking of it till I have given to the pursuit such an amount of
energy as no duty can require? Thrice he has endeavoured to kill me,
firing at me in the dark, getting at me from behind hedges, as no
one who has anything of the spirit of man in his bosom will do when
he strives to destroy his enemy. All that