On the Thursday after lunch they were again together.  It had become so much a habit that the walk repeated itself without an effort.  It had been part of Mabel’s scheme that it should be so.  During all this morning she had been thinking of her scheme.  It was all hopeless.  So much she had declared to herself.  But forlorn hopes do sometimes end in splendid triumphs.  That which she might gain was so much!  And what could she lose?  The sweet bloom of her maiden shame?  That, she told herself, with bitterest inward tears, was already gone from her.  Frank Tregear at any rate knew where her heart had been given.  Frank Tregear knew that having lost her heart to one man she was anxious to marry another.  He knew that she was willing to accept the coronet of a duchess as her consolation.  That bloom of her maiden shame, of which she quite understood the sweetness of the charm, the value—­was gone when she had brought herself to such a state that any human being should know that, loving one man, she should be willing to marry another.  The sweet treasure was gone from her.  Its aroma was fled.  It behoved her now to be ambitious, cautious,—­and if possible successful.

When first she had so resolved, success seemed to be easily within her reach.  Of all the golden youths that crossed her path no one was so pleasant to her eye, to her ear, to her feelings generally as this Duke’s young heir.  There was a coming manliness about him which she liked,—–­and she liked even the slight want of present manliness.  Putting aside Frank Tregear she could go nearer to loving him than any other man she had ever seen.  With him she would not be turned from her duties by disgust, by dislike, or dismay.  She could even think that the time would come when she might really love him.  Then she had all but succeeded, and she might have succeeded altogether had she been a little more prudent.  But she had allowed her great prize to escape from her fingers.

But the prize was not yet utterly beyond her grasp.  To recover it,—­to recover even the smallest chance of recovering it, there would be need of great exertion.  She must be bold, sudden, unwomanlike,—­and yet with such display of woman’s charms that he at least should discover no want.  She must be false, but false with such perfect deceit, that he must regard her as a pearl of truth.  If anything could lure him back it must be his conviction of her passionate love.  And she must be strong;—­so strong as to overcome not only his weakness, but all that was strong in him.  She knew that he did love that other girl,—­and she must overcome even that.  And to do this she must prostrate herself at his feet,—­ as, since the world began, it has been the man’s province to prostrate himself at the feet of the woman he loves.

To do this she must indeed bid adieu to the sweet bloom of her maiden shame!  But had she not done so already when, by the side of the brook at Killancodlem, she had declared to him plainly enough her despair at hearing that he loved that other girl?  Though she were to grovel at his feet she could not speak more plainly than she had done then; but—­though the chances were small,—­perchance she might tell it more effectually.