Neither did she confide into the willing ears of the sympathetic woman the details of her gradual awakening from Dalton’s spell as his irritability, cowardice, and selfishness became more and more apparent.  Nor yet of her growing anxiety as their resources declined; an anxiety which had so weighed upon her mind that she could neither sleep nor rest, despite his continued promises of daily remittances that never came and his rose-colored schemes for raising money which never materialized.

Neither did she uncover the secret places of her own heart, and tell the old nurse of the fight she had made in those earlier days when she had faced the situation without flinching; nor of her stubborn determination to still fight on to the end.  She had even at one time sought to defend him against herself.  All men had their weaknesses, she had reasoned; Guy had his.  Moreover, the crash had been none of his doing.  He had been deceived by false reports instigated by his enemies, including her own father-in-law and—­ yes, her husband as well, who could have avoided the catastrophe had he followed Guy’s advice, and persuaded Sir Carroll O’Day to hold on to his shares.  How, then, could she desert him, poor as he was and with the world against him?  She had been untrue to everything else.  Could she not redeem herself by being at least true to her sin?

What she did tell Martha, and there was the old ring in her voice as she spoke, was of her refusal to yield to Dalton’s presistent entreaties to write to her father for sufficient money to start him in a new enterprise which, with “even his limited means”—­ thus ran the letter she was to copy and sign—­“was already exceeding his most sanguine expectations, and which, with a few thousand pounds of additional capital, would yield enormous returns.”  And she might have added that so emphatic had been her refusal that, for the first time in all their intercourse, Dalton’s eyes had been opened to something he had never realized in her before, the quality of the blood that runs in some Englishwomen’s veins—­this time the blood of the Carnavons, who for two centuries had been noted for their indomitable will.

Her defiance had seemed all the more remarkable to him because as he well knew their combined resources were dwindling.  She had, in fact, only a few finger-rings left, together with some cheap trinkets; among them a pair of sleeve-buttons then in her cuff’s, a pair which she had given Felix and which she found in her jewel-box the day after she left him, and which she had determined to return until she realized how small was their value.

The rest of her sad story came by fits and starts.