rageous herself, that this was what she would find, she did not
know. But there it was, as Asgill had foretold it, and as she had
foreseen it, through the long, restless, torturing hours; as she had
seen it, and now denied it, now, with a sick heart, owned its reality.

James tried to utter the oath that, deceiving her, might rid him of her
presence. But his nerves, shaken by his overnight drink, could not
command his voice even for that. His eyes dropped in shame, the
muttered "What the plague will you be wanting at this hour?" was no
more than a querulous whisper.

"I couldn't sleep," she said, avoiding his eyes.

"I, no more," he muttered. "Curse him! Curse him! Curse you, too! Why
were you getting in his way? You've as good as murdered me with your
tricks and your poses!"

"God forbid!" she exclaimed.

"Ah, you have!" he answered, rocking himself to and fro in his
excitement. "If it were any one else, I'm as ready to fight as another!
And why not? But he's killed four men, and he'll kill me! Oh, the
differ, if I'd not come up at that minute! If I'd not come up at that
minute!"

The picture of what he would have escaped had he mounted the stairs a
minute later, of what he had brought on himself by mounting a moment
earlier, was too much for him. Not a thought did he give to what might
have happened to her had he come on the scene later; but, with all his
cowardly soul laid bare, he rocked himself to and fro in a paroxysm of
self-pity.

Yet he did not suffer more sorely, he did not wince more tenderly under
the lash of his own terrors, than Flavia suffered; than she winced,
seeing him thus, seeing at last her idol as he was--the braggadocio
stripped from him, and the poor, cringing creature displayed. If her
pride of race--and the fabled Wicklow kings, of whom she came, were
often in her mind--if that pride needed correction, she had it here. If
she had thought too much of her descent--and the more in proportion as
fortune had straitened the line, and only in this corner of a
downtrodden land was its greatness even a memory--she was chastened for
it now! She suffered for it now! She could have wept tears of shame.
And yet, so plain was the collapse of the man before her, and so futile
words, that she did not think of reproach; even had she found heart to
chide him, knowing that her words might send him to his death.

All her thought was, could she hide the blot? Could she mask the shame?
Could she, at any ra