behind her bosom. The years were rough artists: perhaps she was
combative, and fought them for touching her ungallantly; and that perhaps
was her first manly step. Baroness Lucie was of high birth, a wife
openly maltreated, a woman of breeding, but with a man's head, capable of
inspiring man-like friendships, and of entertaining them. She was
radically-minded, strongly of the Radical profession of faith, and a
correspondent of revolutionary chiefs; both the trusted adviser and
devoted slave of him whose future glorious career she measured by his
abilities. Rumour blew out a candle and left the wick to smoke in
relation to their former intercourse. The Philistines revenged
themselves on an old aristocratic Radical and a Jew demagogue with the
weapon that scandal hands to virtue. They are virtuous or nothing, and
they must show that they are so when they can; and best do they show it
by publicly dishonouring the friendship of a man and a woman; for to be
in error in malice does not hurt them, but they profoundly feel that they
are fools if they are duped.

She was aware of the recent course of events; she had as she protested,
nothing to accuse herself of, and she could hardly part her lips without
a self-exculpation.

'It will fall on me!' she said to Tresten, in her emphatic tone. 'He
will have his interview with the girl. He will subdue the girl. He will
manacle himself in the chains he makes her wear. She will not miss her
chance! I am the object of her detestation. I am the price paid for
their reconcilement. She will seize her opportunity to vilipend me, and
I shall be condemned by the kind of court-martial which hurries over the
forms of a brial to sign the execution-warrant that makes it feel like
justice. You will see. She cannot forgive me for not pretending to
enter into her enthusiasm. She will make him believe I conspired against