He, however, was dragged to look down.  Neither Gorgon nor Venus, nor a mingling of them, she had the chasm of the face, recalling the face of his bondage, seen first that night at Baden.  It recalled and it was not the face; it was the skull of the face, or the flesh of the spirit.  Occasionally she looked, for a twinkle or two, the creature or vision she had been, as if to mock by reminding him.  She was the abhorred delusion, who captured him by his nerves, ensnared his word—­the doing of a foul witch.  How had it leapt from his mouth?  She must have worked for it.  The word spoken—­she must have known it—­he was bound, or the detested Henrietta would have said:  Not even true to his word!

To see her now, this girl, insisting to share his name, for a slip of his tongue, despite the warning sent her through her uncle, had that face much as a leaden winter landscape pretends to be the country radiant in colour.  She belonged to the order of the variable animals—­a woman indeed!—­womanish enough in that.  There are men who love women—­the idea of woman.  Woman is their shepherdess of sheep.  He loved freedom, loathed the subjection of a partnership; could undergo it only in adoration of an ineffable splendour.  He had stepped to the altar fancying she might keep to her part of the contract by appearing the miracle that subdued him.  Seen by light of day, this bitter object beside him was a witch without her spells; that is, the skeleton of the seductive, ghastliest among horrors and ironies.  Let her have the credit of doing her work thoroughly before the exposure.  She had done it.  She might have helped—­such was the stipulation of his mad freak in consenting to the bondage—­yes, she might have helped to soften the sting of his wound.  She was beside him bearing his name, for the perpetual pouring of an acid on the wound that vile Henrietta—­poisoned honey of a girl!—­had dealt.

He glanced down at his possession:—­heaven and the yawning pit were the contrast!  Poisoned honey is after all honey while you eat it.  Here there was nothing but a rocky bowl of emptiness.  And who was she?  She was the sister of Henrietta’s husband.  He was expected to embrace the sister of Henrietta’s husband.  Those two were on their bridal tour.

This creature was also the daughter of an ancient impostor and desperado called the Old Buccaneer; a distinguished member of the family of the Lincolnshire Kirbys, boasting a present representative grimly acquitted, men said, on a trial for murder.  An eminent alliance!  Society considered the Earl of Fleetwood wildish, though he could manage his affairs.  He and his lawyers had them under strict control.  How of himself?  The prize of the English marriage market had taken to his bosom for his winsome bride the daughter of the Old Buccaneer.  He was to mix his blood with the blood of the Lincolnshire Kirbys, lying pallid under the hesitating acquittal of a divided jury.

How had he come to this pass, which swung him round to think almost regretfully of the scorned multitude of fair besiegers in the market, some of whom had their unpoetic charms?