from her, though her father had slain Don John of Austria to save it, and was to die for it himself.  She could give it before she could be robbed of it, perhaps, and it might buy his life.  She could still forfeit her good name of her own free will, and call herself what she was not.  In words she could give her honour to the dead man, and the dead could not rise up and deny her nor refuse the gift.  And it seemed to her that when the people should hear her, they would believe her, seeing that it was her shame, a shame such as no maiden who had honour left would bear before the world.  But it was hard to do.  For honour was her last and only possession now that all was taken from her.

It was not the so-called honour of society, either, based on long-forgotten traditions, and depending on convention for its being—­not the sort of honour within which a man may ruin an honest woman and suffer no retribution, but which decrees that he must take his own life if he cannot pay a debt of play made on his promise to a friend, which allows him to lie like a cheat, but ordains that he must give or require satisfaction of blood for the imaginary insult of a hasty word—­the honour which is to chivalry what black superstition is to the true Christian faith, which compares with real courage and truth and honesty, as an ape compares with a man.  It was not that, and Dolores knew it, as every maiden knows it; for the honour of woman is the fact on which the whole world turns, and has turned and will turn to the end of things; but what is called the honour of society has been a fiction these many centuries, and though it came first of a high parentage, of honest thought wedded to brave deed, and though there are honourable men yet, these are for the most part the few who talk least loudly about honour’s code, and the belief they hold has come to be a secret and a persecuted faith, at which the common gentleman thinks fit to laugh lest some one should presume to measure him by it and should find him wanting.

Dolores did not mean to hesitate, after she had decided what to do.  But she could not avoid the struggle, and it was long and hard, though she saw the end plainly before her and did not waver.  Inez did not understand and kept silence while it lasted.

It was only a word to say, but it was the word which would be repeated against her as long as she lived, and which nothing she could ever say or do afterwards could take back when it had once been spoken—­it would leave the mark that a lifetime could not efface.  But she meant to speak it.  She could not see what her father would see, that he would rather die, justly or unjustly, than let his daughter be dishonoured before the world.  That was a part of a man’s code, perhaps, but it should not hinder her from saving her father’s life, or trying to, at whatever cost.  What she was fighting against was something much harder to understand in herself.  What could it matter now, that the world should think her fallen