The craven's first instinct for safety, quick as the cavern lynx for
light, set her on the idea that she was abandoned: it whispered of
quietness if she submitted.

And thus she reasoned: Had Alvan taken her, she would not have been
guilty of more than a common piece of love-desperation in running to him,
the which may be love's glory when marriage crowns it. By his rejecting
her and leaving her, he rendered her not only a runaway, but a castaway.
It was not natural that he should leave her; 'not natural in him to act
his recent part; but he had done it; consequently she was at the mercy of
those who might pick her up. She was, in her humiliation and dread, all
of the moment, she could see to no distance; and judging of him, feeling
for herself, within that contracted circle of sensation--sure, from her
knowledge of her cowardice, that he had done unwisely--she became swayed
about like a castaway in soul, until her distinguishing of his mad
recklessness in the challenge of a power greater than his own grew
present with her as his personal cruelty to the woman who had flung off
everything, flung herself on the tempestuous deeps, on his behalf. And
here she was, left to float or founder! Alvan had gone. The man rageing
over the room, abusing her 'infamous lover, the dirty Jew, the notorious
thief, scoundrel, gallowsbird,' etc., etc., frightful epithets, not to be
transcribed--was her father. He had come, she knew not how. Alvan had
tossed her to him.

Abuse of a lover is ordinarily retorted on in the lady's heart by the
brighter perception of his merits; but when the heart is weak, the
creature suffering shame, her lover the cause of it, and seeming cruel,
she is likely to lose all perception and bend like a flower pelted. Her
cry to him: 'If you had been wiser, this would not have been!' will sink
to the inward meditation: 'If he had been truer!'--and though she does