As soon as he was gone the tempest, which Julia’s pride had enabled her to stern for a time, broke forth in a passion of tears and sobs, and, throwing herself on the shabby window-seat, she gave free vent to her grief.  The happy future which the little bean had dangled before her eyes, absurdly as he had fashioned and bedecked it, reminded her all too sharply of that which she had promised herself with one, in whose affections she had fancied herself secure, despite the attacks of the prettiest Abigail in the world.  How fondly had her fancy depicted life with him!  With what happy blushes, what joyful tremors!  And now?  What wonder that at the thought a fresh burst of grief convulsed her frame, or that she presently passed from the extremity of grief to the extremity of rage, and, realising anew Sir George’s heartless desertion and more cruel perfidy, rubbed her tear-stained face in the dusty chintz of the window-seat—­that had known so many childish sorrows—­and there choked the fierce, hysterical words that rose to her lips?

Or what wonder that her next thought was revenge?  She sat up, with her back to the window and the unkempt garden, whence the light stole through the disordered masses of her hair; her face to the empty room.  Revenge?  Yes, she could punish him; she could take this money from him, she could pursue him with a woman’s unrelenting spite, she could hound him from the country, she could have all but his life.  But none of these things would restore her maiden pride; would remove from her the stain of his false love, or rebut the insolent taunt of the eyes to which she had bowed herself captive.  If she could so beat him with his own weapons that he should doubt his conquest, doubt her love; if she could effect that, there was no method she would not adopt, no way she would not take.

Pique in a woman’s mind, even in the mind of the best, finds a rival the tool readiest to hand.  A wave of crimson swept across Julia’s pale face, and she stood up on her feet.  Lady Almeric!  Lady Almeric Doyley!  Here was a revenge, the fittest of revenges, ready to her hand, if she could bring herself to take it.  What if, in the same hour in which he heard that his plan had gone amiss, he heard that she was to marry another? and such another that marry almost whom he might she would take precedence of his wife.  That last was a small thought, a petty thought, worthy of a smaller mind than Julia’s; but she was a woman, and passionate, and the charms of such a revenge in the general, came home to her.  It would show him that others valued what he had cast away; it would convince him—­she hoped, him I yet, alas! she doubted—­that she had taken his suit as lightly as he had meant it.  It would give her a home, a place, a settled position in the world.

She followed it no farther; perhaps because she would act on impulse rather than on reason, blindly rather than on foresight.  In haste, with trembling fingers, she set a chair below the broken, frayed end of a bell-rope that hung on the wall.  Reaching it, as if she feared her resolution might fail before the event, she pulled and pulled frantically, until hurrying footsteps came along the passage, and Mrs. Olney with a foolish face of alarm entered the room.