his wife.  If a girl were to be subjected to such treatment as this when she herself had been so firm, so discreet, so decided, then indeed it would be unfit that a girl should trust herself with a man.  She had never thought that he had been such a one as that, to ill-use her, to lay a hand on her in violence, to refuse to take an answer.  She threw herself on the bed and sobbed, and then hid her face and was conscious that in spite of this acting before herself she was the happiest girl alive.  He had behaved very badly of course, he had behaved most wickedly, and she would tell him so some day.  But was he not the dearest fellow living?  Did ever man speak with more absolute conviction of love in every tone of his voice?  Was it not the finest, noblest heart that ever throbbed beneath a waistcoat?  Had not his very wickedness come from the overpowering truth of his affection for her?  She would never quite forgive him because it had been so very wrong; but she would be true to him for ever and ever.  Of course they could not marry.  What! would she go to him and be a clog round his neck, and a weight upon him for ever, bringing him down to the gutter by the burden of her own useless and unworthy self?  No.  She would never so injure him.  She would not even hamper him by an engagement.  But yet she would be true to him.  She had an idea that in spite of all her protestations which, as she looked back upon them, appeared to her to have been louder than they had been, that through the teeth of her denials, something of the truth had escaped from her.  Well let it be so.  It was the truth, and why should he not know it?  Then she pictured to herself a long romance, in which the heroine lived happily on the simple knowledge that she had been beloved.  And the reader may be sure that in this romance Mr Glascock with his splendid prospects filled one of the characters.

She had been so wretched at Nuncombe Putney when she had felt herself constrained to admit to herself that this man for whom she had sacrificed herself did not care for her, that she could not now but enjoy her triumph.  After she had sobbed upon the bed, she got up and walked about the room smiling; and she would now press her hands to her forehead, and then shake her tresses, and then clasp her own left hand with her right, as though he were still holding it.  Wicked man!  Why had he been so wicked and so violent?  And why, why, why had she not once felt his lips upon her brow?

And she was pleased with herself.  Her sister had rebuked her because she had refused to make her fortune by marrying Mr Glascock; and, to own the truth, she had rebuked herself on the same score when she found that Hugh Stanbury had not had a word of love to say to her.  It was not that she regretted the grandeur which she had lost, but that she should, even within her own thoughts, with the consciousness of her own bosom, have declared herself unable to receive another man’s devotion because of her