"Ay, betther in a throng room than a thin one; ay, and you promised to
meet him at the well to-night; and you kept your word."

A woman's courage and determination to persist in falsehood are never
so decided and deliberate as when she feels that the suspicion expressed
against her is true. She then gets into heroics and attempts to turn the
tables upon her opponent, especially when she knows, as Miss Davoren did
on this occasion, that he has nothing but suspicion to support him. She
knew that her lover had been at the bonfire, and that his friends must
have seen her dance with Woodward; and this she did not attempt to deny,
because she could not; but as for their tryst at the well, she felt
satisfied, from her knowledge of his jealous and violent character, that
if he had been aware of it, it would not have been by seeking the fact
through the medium of his threats and her fears that he would have
proceeded. Had he seen Woodward, for instance, and herself holding a
secret meeting in such a place and at such an hour, she concluded justly
that the _middogue_ or dagger, for the use of which he had been already
so celebrated, would have been brought into requisition against either
one or both.

"I'll talk no more to you," she replied, with a flushed face; "for even
if I tould you the truth, you wouldn't believe me. I did meet him, then;
are you satisfied now?"

This admission was an able stroke of policy on her part, as the reader
will soon perceive.

"O," he exclaimed, with a bitter, or, rather, a furious expression of
face, "_dar manim_, if you had, you wouldn't dare to confess as much.
But listen to me; if I ever hear or know, to my own satisfaction, that