“It was too hard upon me,” continued Zenobia, addressing Hollingsworth, “that judge, jury, and accuser should all be comprehended in one man!  I demur, as I think the lawyers say, to the jurisdiction.  But let the learned Judge Coverdale seat himself on the top of the rock, and you and me stand at its base, side by side, pleading our cause before him!  There might, at least, be two criminals instead of one.”

“You forced this on me,” replied Hollingsworth, looking her sternly in the face.  “Did I call you hither from among the masqueraders yonder?  Do I assume to be your judge?  No; except so far as I have an unquestionable right of judgment, in order to settle my own line of behavior towards those with whom the events of life bring me in contact.  True, I have already judged you, but not on the world’s part,—­neither do I pretend to pass a sentence!”

“Ah, this is very good!” cried Zenobia with a smile.  “What strange beings you men are, Mr. Coverdale!—­is it not so?  It is the simplest thing in the world with you to bring a woman before your secret tribunals, and judge and condemn her unheard, and then tell her to go free without a sentence.  The misfortune is, that this same secret tribunal chances to be the only judgment-seat that a true woman stands in awe of, and that any verdict short of acquittal is equivalent to a death sentence!”

The more I looked at them, and the more I heard, the stronger grew my impression that a crisis had just come and gone.  On Hollingsworth’s brow it had left a stamp like that of irrevocable doom, of which his own will was the instrument.  In Zenobia’s whole person, beholding her more closely, I saw a riotous agitation; the almost delirious disquietude of a great struggle, at the close of which the vanquished one felt her strength and courage still mighty within her, and longed to renew the contest.  My sensations were as if I had come upon a battlefield before the smoke was as yet cleared away.

And what subjects had been discussed here?  All, no doubt, that for so many months past had kept my heart and my imagination idly feverish.  Zenobia’s whole character and history; the true nature of her mysterious connection with Westervelt; her later purposes towards Hollingsworth, and, reciprocally, his in reference to her; and, finally, the degree in which Zenobia had been cognizant of the plot against Priscilla, and what, at last, had been the real object of that scheme.  On these points, as before, I was left to my own conjectures.  One thing, only, was certain.  Zenobia and Hollingsworth were friends no longer.  If their heartstrings were ever intertwined, the knot had been adjudged an entanglement, and was now violently broken.

But Zenobia seemed unable to rest content with the matter in the posture which it had assumed.

“Ah! do we part so?” exclaimed she, seeing Hollingsworth about to retire.

“And why not?” said he, with almost rude abruptness.  “What is there further to be said between us?”