‘For this travesty,’ he answered; and coolly, as he stood before her, he twitched the sleeve of her shapeless gown, looking masterfully down at her the while, so that her eyes fell before his.  ’Did you think it kind to me or fair to me,’ he continued, almost sternly, ’to make that difficult, Julia, which my honour required, and which you knew that my honour required?  Which, if I had not come to do, you would have despised me in your heart, and presently with your lips?  Did you think it fair to widen the distance between us by this—­this piece of play-acting?  Give me your hand.’

She obeyed, trembling, tongue-tied.  He held it an instant, looked at it, and dropped it almost contemptuously.  ’It has not cleaned that step before,’ he said.  ‘Now put up your hair.’

She did so with shaking fingers, her cheeks pale, tears oozing from under her lowered eyelashes.  He devoured her with his gaze.

‘Now go to your room,’ he said.  ’Take off that rag and come to me properly dressed.’

‘How?’ she whispered.

‘As my wife.’

‘It is impossible,’ she cried with a gesture of despair; ’It is impossible.’

‘Is that the answer you would have given me at Manton Corner?’

‘Oh no, no!’ she cried.  ‘But everything is changed.’

‘Nothing is changed.’

‘You said so,’ she retorted feverishly.  ‘You said that it was changed!’

‘And have you, too, told the whole truth?’ he retorted.  ’Go, silly child!  If you are determined to play Pamela to the end, at least you shall play it in other guise than this.  ’Tis impossible to touch you!  And yet, if you stand long and tempt me, I vow, sweet, I shall fall!’

To his astonishment she burst into hysterical laughter.  ’I thought men wooed—­with promises!’ she cried.  ’Why don’t you tell me I shall have my jewels; and my box at the Opera and the King’s House?  And go to Vauxhall and the Masquerades?  And have my frolic in the pit with the best?  And keep my own woman as ugly as I please?  He did; and I said Yes to him!  Why don’t you say the same?’

Sir George was prepared for almost anything, but not for that.  His face grew dark.  ‘He did?  Who did?’ he asked grimly, his eyes on her face.

‘Lord Almeric!  And I said Yes to him—­for three hours.’

‘Lord Almeric?’

‘Yes!  For three hours,’ she answered with a laugh, half hysterical, half despairing.  ’If you must know, I thought you had carried me off to—­to get rid of my claim—­and me!  I thought—­I thought you had only been playing with me,’ she continued, involuntarily betraying by her tone how deep had been her misery.  ’I was only Pamela, and ’twas cheaper, I thought, to send me to the Plantations than to marry me.’

‘And Lord Almeric offered you marriage?’

‘I might have been my lady,’ she cried in bitter abasement.  ‘Yes.’

‘And you accepted him?’

‘Yes!  Yes, I accepted him.’