secret! That she had read my heart better than myself was evident from
that Parthian shaft, barbed with Dr. Jones, which she had shot over her
shoulder in retreat. That from the first moment in which she had decoyed
me to her side, she had detected "the something" on my mind, was perhaps
but the ordinary quickness of female penetration. But it was with no
ordinary craft that the whole conversation afterwards had been so shaped
as to learn the something, and lead me to reveal the some one to whom the
something was linked. For what purpose? What was it to her? What motive
could she have beyond the mere gratification of curiosity? Perhaps, at
first, she thought I had been caught by her daughter's showy beauty, and
hence the half-friendly, half-cynical frankness with which she had avowed
her ambitious projects for that young lady's matrimonial advancement.
Satisfied by my manner that I cherished no presumptuous hopes in that
quarter, her scrutiny was doubtless continued from that pleasure in the
exercise of a wily intellect which impels schemers and politicians to an
activity for which, without that pleasure itself, there would seem no
adequate inducement. And besides, the ruling passion of this petty
sovereign was power; and if knowledge be power, there is no better
instrument of power over a contumacious subject than that hold on his
heart which is gained in the knowledge of its secret.

But "secret"! Had it really come to this? Was it possible that the
mere sight of a human face, never beheld before, could disturb the whole
tenor of my life,--a stranger of whose mind and character I knew nothing,
whose very voice I had never heard? It was only by the intolerable pang
of anguish that had rent my heart in the words, carelessly, abruptly
spoken, "if she were to die," that I had felt how the world would be
changed to me, if indeed that face were seen in it no more! Yes, secret
it was no longer to myself, I loved! And like all on whom love descends,
sometimes softly, slowly, with the gradual wing of the cushat settling