stronger in the Duke's eyes, that he had done this cruel thing. But,
would it have been cruel if she herself had been human and different? He
had called her from struggling and poverty, had given her this splendid
young husband, and riches and place,--no, there was nothing cruel in it,
as a calculated action. It should have given her her heart's desire. It
was she, herself, who had brought about things as they were, because of
her ignorance, that was the cruelty, to have let her go away with
Tristram, in ignorance.

Then the aspect of the case that she had been offered to him and
refused! scourged her again; then the remembrance that he had taken her,
for love. And what motive could he imagine she had had? This struck her
for the first time--how infinitely more generous he had been--for he had
not allowed, what he must have thought was pure mercenariness and desire
for position on her part to interfere with his desire for her
personally. He had never turned upon her, as she saw now he very well
could have done, and thrown this in her teeth. And then she fell to
bitter sobbing, and so at last to sleep.

And when the fire had died out, towards the gray dawn, she woke again
shivering and in mortal fright, for she had dreamed of Mirko, and that
he was being torn from her, while he played the _Chanson Triste_. Then
she grew fully awake and remembered that this was the beginning of the
new day--the day she should go to her husband's home; and she had
accused him of all the base things a man could do, and he had behaved
like a gentleman; and it was she who was base, and had sold herself for
her brother's life, sold what should never be bartered for any life,
but only for love.

Well, there was nothing to be done, only to "play the game"--the