Look at her as she stands there, tortured by the knowledge of her own
secret--the hideous secret which she is hiding from the innocent girl,
whom she loves with a sister's love. Look at her, bowed down under a
humiliation which is unutterable in words. She has seen him below the
surface--now, when it is too late. She rates him at his true value--now,
when her reputation is at his mercy. Ask her the question: What was
there to love in a man who can speak to you as that man has spoken,
who can treat you as that man is treating you now? you so clever, so
cultivated, so refined--what, in Heaven's name, could _you_ see in him?
Ask her that, and she will have no answer to give. She will not even
remind you that he was once your model of manly beauty, too--that you
waved your handkerchief till you could wave it no longer, when he took
his seat, with the others, in the boat--that your heart was like to jump
out of your bosom, on that later occasion when he leaped the last
hurdle at the foot-race, and won it by a head. In the bitterness of her
remorse, she will not even seek for _that_ excuse for herself. Is there
no atoning suffering to be seen here? Do your sympathies shrink from
such a character as this? Follow her, good friends of virtue, on the
pilgrimage that leads, by steep and thorny ways, to the purer atmosphere
and the nobler life. Your fellow-creature, who has sinned and has
repented--you have the authority of the Divine Teacher for it--is
your fellow-creature, purified and ennobled. A joy among the angels of
heaven--oh, my brothers and sisters of the earth, have I not laid my
hand on a fit companion for You?



There was a moment of silence in the summer-house. The cheerful tumult
of the lawn-party was pleasantly audible from the distance. Outside, the
hum of voices, the laughter of girls, the thump of the croquet-mallet