entreated against the sacrifice.  He was smiling down with an air of faint amusement; yet beneath the lashes she read a command which mastered her will, imposed silence.  He had taken on a new manliness, and for the first time in the story of their loves she felt herself dominated by something stronger than passion.  He had swept her off her feet, before now, by boyish ardour:  her humility, the marvel of being loved, had aided him; but hitherto in her heart she had always felt her own character to be the stronger.  Now he challenged her on woman’s own ground—­that of self-abnegation; he commanded her to his own hurt, he towered above her.  She had never dreamed of a love like this.  Beaten, despairing for him, yet proud as she had never been in her life, she held her breath.

Corporal Zeally was merely bewildered.  His was a deliberate mind and had hatched out the night’s catastrophe after incubating it for weeks.  Unconvinced by Polly’s explanation of her meeting with M. Raoul at the Nursery gate, he had nursed a dull jealousy and set himself to watch, and had dogged his man down at length with the slow cunning of a yokel bred of a line of poachers.  Raoul’s tribute to his smartness perplexed him and almost he scented a trap.

“Beg your pardon, Squire,” he began heavily, forgetting military forms of address, “but the gentleman don’t put it right.”

“Oh, hang your British modesty!” put in Raoul with a wry laugh.  “If it pleases you to represent that the whole thing was accidental and you don’t deserve to be promoted sergeant for tonight’s work, at least you might respect my vanity.”

Polly saw her opportunity.  She crossed boldly and made as if to lay over the Corporal’s mouth the hand that would fain have boxed his ears.  “Reckon this is my affair,” she announced, with an effrontery at which one of the footmen guffawed openly.  “Be modest as you please, my lad, when I’ve married ’ee; but I won’t put up with modesty from anyone under a sergeant, and that I warn ’ee!”

The Corporal eyed his sweetheart without forgiveness.  His mouth was open, but upon the word “sergeant,” he shut it again and began to digest the idea.

“You know, of course, sir,” Endymion Westcote addressed the prisoner coldly, “to what such a confession commits you?  I do not see what other construction the facts admit, but it is so serious in itself and in its consequences that I warn you—­”

“I have broken my parole, sir,” said Raoul, simply.  “Of the temptations you cannot judge.  Of the shame I am as profoundly sensible as you can be.  The consequences I am ready to suffer.”

He sank back in his chair as Dr. Ibbetson entered.

An hour later Dorothea said goodnight to her brother in the great hall.  He had lit his candle and was mixing himself a glass of brandy and water.

“The sight of blood—­” he excused himself.  “I am sorry for the fellow, though I never liked him.  I suppose, now, there was nothing between him and that girl Polly?  For a moment—­from Zeally’s manner—­” He gulped down the drink.  “His confession was honest enough, anyhow.  Poor fool! he’s safe in hospital for a week, and his friends, if he has any, and they know what it means, will pray for that week to be prolonged.”