The tears came in his eyes. This woman, then, that looked so like an
angel, was angel all through. Yet, touched as he felt in his better
nature, the proletary instinct bade him try once more if her effort to
get rid of him originated in pity or fear, and he muttered, "Guineas!
make it guineas, miss, and I'll say 'done.'"

"Not a shilling more, not a farthing," she answered, moving her hand
as if to put it on the bell-pull. "It cannot matter to me," she added,
in a tone of the most complete indifference, "but while I am about
it I think I would rather be the making of an honest man than the
destruction of a rogue."

Her acting was perfect. She seemed so cold, so impassive, so
completely mistress of the position, and all the time her heart was
beating as the gambler's beats, albeit in winning vein, ere he lifts
the box from off the imprisoned dice--as the lion-tamer's beats when
he spurns in its very den the monster that could crush him with a
movement, and that yet he holds in check by an imaginary force,
irresistible only so long as it is unresisted.

Such situations have a horrible fascination of their own. I have even
known them prolonged to gratify a morbid thirst for excitement; but
I think Miss Bruce was chiefly anxious to be released from her
precarious position, and to get rid of her visitor as soon as she
could. Even her resolute nerves were beginning to give way, and she
knew her own powers well enough to mistrust a protracted trial of
endurance. Feminine fortitude is so apt to break down all at once, and
Miss Bruce, though a courageous specimen of her sex, was but a woman
who had wrought herself up for a gallant effort, after all.