Contessa, with a shiver. "You might die."

"Die!" the girl cried, in a voice like a silver trumpet with a keen
sweetness of scorn and tenderness combined. "_Apres_?" she said,
throwing back her head. She was not capable of those questions which Mr.
Derwentwater and his pupil had set before her. But here she was upon
different ground.

"Oh, she is capable of all! she is a girl that is capable of all," cried
the Contessa, sinking once more into a chair.

CHAPTER L.

THE EVE OF SORROW.

Sir Tom stepped out into the night some time after, holding Jock by the
arm. The boy had a sort of thrill and tremble in him as if he had been
reading poetry or witnessing some great tragic scene, which the elder
man partially understood without being at all aware that Jock had
himself been an actor in this drama. He himself had been dismissed out
of it, so to speak. His mind was relieved, and yet he was not so
satisfied as he expected to be. It had been proved to him that he had no
responsibility for Bice, and his anxiety relieved on that subject;
relieved, oh yes: and yet was he a little disappointed too. It would
have been endless embarrassment, and Lucy would not have liked it. Still
he had been accustoming himself to the idea, and, now that it was broken
clean off, he was not so much pleased as he had expected. Poor little
Bice! her little burst of generous gratitude and affection had gone to
his heart. If that little thing who (it appeared) had died in Florence
so many years ago had survived and grown a woman, as an hour ago he had
believed her to have done, that is how he should have liked her to feel
and to express herself. Such a sense of approval and admiration was in
him that he felt the disappointment the more. Yes, he supposed it was a
disappointment. He had begun to get used to the idea, and he had always
liked the girl; but of course it was a relief--the greatest relief--to
have no explanation to make to Lucy, instead of the painful one which
perhaps she would only partially believe. He had felt that it would be
most difficult to make her understand that, though this was so, he had
not been in any plot, and had not known of it any more than she did when
Bice was brought to his house. This would have been the difficult point
in the matter, and now, heaven be praised! all that was over, and there
was no mystery, nothing to explain. But so strange is human sentiment
that the world felt quite impoverished to Sir To