She had so much common-sense she realized the position exactly about him.  She had not married him under any false impression.  There had been no question of love—­she had frankly been bought, and had as frankly detested him.  But his illness and suffering had appealed to her tender heart—­and afterwards his generosity.  He was not unselfish, but, according to his lights, he heaped her with kindness.  He could not help being common and ridiculous.  And he had paid with solid gold for her, gold to make papa comfortable and happy, and she must fulfil her part of the bargain and remain a faithful wife at all costs.

This visit must be the last time she should meet her love.  She must tell him, implore him—­he who was free and master of his life; he must go away, must promise not to follow her, must help her to do what was right and just.  She had no sentimental feeling of personal wickedness now.  How could it be wicked to love—­to love truly and tenderly?  She had not sought love; he had come upon her.  It would be wicked to give way to her feelings, to take Hector for a lover; but she had no sense of being a wicked woman as things were, any more than if she had badly burned her hand and was suffering deeply from the wound; she would have considered herself wicked for having had the mischance thus to injure herself.  She was intensely unhappy, and she was going to try and do what was right.  That was all.  And God and those kind angels who steered the barks beyond the rocks would perhaps help her.

Hector for his part, had retired to rest boiling with passion and rage, the subtle, odious insinuations of Mildred ringing in his ears.  The remembrance of the menace on Morella’s dull face as she had watched Theodora depart, and, above all, Wensleydown’s behavior as they all said good-night:  nothing for him actually to take hold of, and yet enough to convulse him with jealous fury.

Oh, if she were only his own!  No man should dare to look at her like that.  But Josiah had stood by and not even noticed it.

Passionate jealousy is not a good foster-parent for prudence.

The Sunday came, and with it a wild, mad longing to be near her again—­never to leave her, to prevent any one else from so much as saying a word.  Others besides Wensleydown had begun to experience the attraction of her beauty and charm.  If considerations of wisdom should keep him from her side, he would have the anguish of seeing these others take his place, and that he could not suffer.

And as passion in a man rages higher than in the average woman, especially passion when accelerated by the knowledge of another’s desire to rob it of its own, so Hector’s conclusions were not so clear as Theodora’s.

He dared not look ahead.  All he was conscious of was the absolute determination to protect her from Wensleydown—­to keep her for himself.

And fate was gathering all the threads together for an inevitable catastrophe, or so it seemed to the Crow when the long, exquisite June Sunday evening was drawing to a close and he looked back on the day.