always said, is the protection of the household slave against the domestic tyrant.  If I had ever been harsh or unjust to you, if I had made your life unhappy by caprice or by severity, I could understand.  But you of all have had least reason to complain.  Not Enva’s jealous temper, not Leenoo’s spite, ever suggested to them the idea which came so easily and was so long and deliberately cherished in your breast.”

She rose and faced me, and there was something of contempt in the eyes that answered mine for this once with the old fearless frankness.

“I had no reason to hate you?  Not certainly for the kind of injury which commonly provokes women to risk the lives their masters have made intolerable.  That your discipline was the lightest ever known in a household, I need not tell you.  That it fell more lightly, if somewhat oftener, on me than on others, you know as well as I. Put all the correction or reproof I ever received from you into one, and repeat it daily, and never should I have complained, much less dreamed of revenge.  You think Enva or Leenoo might less unnaturally, less unreasonably, have turned upon you, because your measure to their faults was somewhat harder and your heart colder to them!  You did not scruple to make a favourite of me after a fashion, as you would never have done even of Eunane.  You could pet and play with me, check and punish me, as a child who would not ’sicken at the sweets, or be humbled by the sandal.’  You forbore longer, you dealt more sternly with them, because, forsooth, they were women and I a baby.  I, who was not less clever than Eunane, not less capable of love, perhaps of devotion to you, than Eveena, I might rest my head on your knee when she was by, I might listen to your talk when others were sent away; I was too much the child, too little the woman, to excite your distrust or her jealousy.  Do you suppose I think better of you, or feel the more kindly towards you, that you have not taken vengeance?  No! still you have dealt with me as a child; so untaught yet by that last lesson, that even a woman’s revenge cannot make you treat me as a woman!  Clasfempta! you bear, I believe, outside, the fame of a wise and a firm man; but in these little hands you have been as weak a fool as the veriest dotard might have been;—­and may be yet.”

“As you will,” I answered, stung into an anger which at any rate quelled the worst pain I had felt when I entered the room.  “Fool or sage, Eive, I was your fellow-creature, your protector, and your friend.  When bitter trouble befals you in life, or when, alone, you find yourself face to face with death, you may think of what has passed to-day.  Then remember, for your comfort, my last words—­I forgive you, and I wish you happy.”