cause, the ties uniting her to him? Unworthiness of that kind, is not
commonly the capital offence in love. Tony's deep prostration and her
resplendent picture of her judge and executioner, kept Emma questioning
within herself. Gradually she became enlightened enough to distinguish
in the man a known, if not common, type of the externally soft and
polished, internally hard and relentless, who are equal to the trials of
love only as long as favouring circumstances and seemings nurse the fair
object of their courtship.

Her thoughts recurred to the madness driving Tony to betray the secret;
and the ascent unhelped to get a survey of it and her and the conditions,
was mountainous. She toiled up but to enter the regions of cloud; sure
nevertheless that the obscurity was penetrable and excuses to be
discovered somewhere. Having never wanted money herself, she was unable
perfectly to realize the urgency of the need: she began however to
comprehend that the very eminent gentleman, before whom all human
creatures were to bow in humility, had for an extended term considerably
added to the expenses of Tony's household, by inciting her to give those
little dinners to his political supporters, and bringing comrades
perpetually to supper-parties, careless of how it might affect her
character and her purse. Surely an honourable man was bound to her in
honour? Tony's remark: 'I have the reptile in me, dear,' her exaggeration
of the act, in her resigned despair,--was surely no justification for his
breaking from her, even though he had discovered a vestige of the common
'reptile,' to leave her with a stain on her name?--There would not have
been a question about it if Tony had not exalted him so loftily,
refusing, in visible pain, to hear him blamed.

Danvers had dressed a bed for Lady Dunstane in her mistress's chamber,
where often during the night Emma caught a sound of stifled weeping or