and turned
me out of doors, though I never did you wrong. This man was a husband
to me--long, long before I met you. He never did you any harm; he never
will. He will bless you if you save him, Maurice."

Frere jerked his head impatiently. "Bless me!" he said. "I don't want
his blessings. Let him swing. Who cares?"

Still she persisted, with tears streaming from her eyes, with white arms
upraised, on her knees even, catching at his coat, and beseeching him
in broken accents. In her wild, fierce beauty and passionate abandonment
she might have been a deserted Ariadne--a suppliant Medea. Anything
rather than what she was--a dissolute, half-maddened woman, praying for
the pardon of her convict husband.

Maurice Frere flung her off with an oath. "Get up!" he cried brutally,
"and stop that nonsense. I tell you the man's as good as dead for all I
shall do to save him."

At this repulse, her pent-up passion broke forth. She sprang to her
feet, and, pushing back the hair that in her frenzied pleading had
fallen about her face, poured out upon him a torrent of abuse. "You! Who
are you, that you dare to speak to me like that? His little finger is
worth your whole body. He is a man, a brave man, not a coward, like you.
A coward! Yes, a coward! a coward! A coward! You are very brave with
defenceless men and weak women. You have beaten me until I was bruised
black, you cur; but who ever saw you attack a man unless he was
chained or bound? Do not I know you? I have seen you taunt a man at
the triangles, until I wished the screaming wretch could get loose,
and murder you as you deserve! You will be murdered one of these days,
Maurice Frere--take my word for it. Men are flesh and blood, and flesh
and blood won't endure the torments you lay on it!"

"There, that'll do," says Frere, growing paler. "Don't excite yourself."

"I know you, you brutal coward. I have not been your mistress--God
forgive me!--without learning you by heart. I've seen your ignorance and
your conceit. I've seen the men who ate your food and drank your
wine laugh at you. I've heard what your friends say; I've heard the
comparisons they make. One of your dogs has more brains than you, and
twice as much heart. And these are the men they send to rule us! Oh,
Heaven! And such an animal as this has life and death in his hand! He
may hang, may he? I'll hang with him, then, and God will forgive me for
murder, for I will kill you!"

Frere had cowered before this fri