snared, of his fate also there could be no
doubt!

She felt all that was most keen, most poignant, of grief, of anger, of
indignation. But the sharpest pang of all--had she analysed her
feelings--was inflicted by the consciousness of failure, and of failure
verging on the ignominious. The mature take good and evil fortune as
they come; but to fail at first setting out in life, to be outwitted in
the opening venture, to have to acknowledge that experience is, after
all, a formidable foe--these are mishaps which sour the magnanimous and
poison young blood.

She had not known before what it was to hate. Now she only lived to
hate: to hate the man who had shown himself so much cleverer than her
friends, who, in a twinkling, and by a single blow, had wrecked her
plans, duped her allies, betrayed her brother, made her name a
laughing-stock, robbed Ireland of a last chance of freedom! who had
held her in his arms, terrified her, mastered her! Oh, why had she
swooned? Why had she not rather, disregarding her womanish weakness,
her womanish fears, snatched the knife from him and plunged it into his
treacherous breast? Why? Why?

CHAPTER XIV

THE COLONEL'S TERMS

Passive courage--courage in circumstances in which a man cannot help
himself, but must abide with bound hands whatever a frowning fortune
and his enemy's spite threaten--is so much higher a virtue than that
which carries him through hot emprises, and is so much more common
among women, that the palm for bravery may fairly be given to the
weaker sex. True, it is not in the first face of danger that a woman
shines; time must be given her to string her nerves. But grant time and
there is no calamity so dreadful, no fate so abhorrent to trembling
humanity, that a woman has not met it smiling: in the sack of cities,
or in the slow agony of towns perishing of hunger, in the dungeon, or
in the grip of disease.

The bravest men share this gift, and some whom the shock of conflict
appals. Cammock and the Bishop belonged to the former class. Seized in
a moment of activity, certain only that they were in hostile hands, and
hurried, blind and helpless, to an unknown doom, they might have been
pardoned had they succumbed to despair. But they did not succumb. The
habit of danger, and a hundred adventures and escapes, had hardened
them; they felt more rage than fear. Stunned for a moment by the
audacity of the attack, and humiliated by its success, they had not
been dr