“What would they both think?  And, moreover, when she heard of it—­as assuredly she would—­what would Miss Gascoigne think and say?”

That overpowering dread, “What will people say?” for the first time in her life began to creep over Christian’s fearless heart.  Such an innocent heart it was, and oh, such a contented one only half an hour ago.

“How dare he?” she said, fiercely, as she found herself alone in her own room, with but just time enough to dress and take her place as the fair, stately, high-thoughted, pure-hearted mistress of her husband’s table.  “How dare he?” and, standing at the glass, she looked almost with disgust into the beautiful face that burnt, hotly still only at the remembrance of the last ten minutes.  “But he must see—­he must surely understand how utterly I despise him.  He will not presume again.  Oh, if I had only told my husband!  It was a terrible mistake?”

What was—­her secret or her marriage? or both?

Christian did not stop to think.  Whatever it was, she knew that, like most of the mistakes and miseries of this world, it was made to be remedied—­made possible of remedy.  At all events, the pain must be endured, fought through, struggled with, any thing but succumbed to.

In the five minutes that, after all, she found she had to wait in the drawing-room before the aunts or her husband appeared.  Christian took herself seriously to task for this overwhelming, cowardly fear.  What had she really to dread?  What harm could he do her—­the bad man of whom she had so ignorantly made a girl’s ideal?  The only testimony thereof was her letters, if he still had them in his possession—­ her poor, innocent, girlish letters—­very few—­just two or three.  Foolish they might have been, sentimental and ridiculous, but she could not remember any thing wrong in them—­any thing that a girl in her teens need blush to have written, either to friend or lover, save for the one fact that, a girl is wiser to have no friend at all among men—­except her lover.  And, whatever they were, most likely he had destroyed them long ago.

“No, no,” she thought, “he can not do me any harm; he dare not!”

It was difficult to say what Sir Edwin Uniacke would not dare; for, going back to her room for some trifle forgotten, she discovered that he was still lounging, cigar in mouth, up and down the river-side avenue opposite, where he could plainly see and be seen from almost every window in the Lodge.

And there, hurrying to meet him, she saw Susan Bennett.  But the meeting appeared not satisfactory, and after a few minutes the girl had left him and he was again seen walking up and down alone.