Indeed the young girl’s expression puzzled him.  The old pride was all gone, and she gave him the impression of one who is conquered and defenceless, and who is ready to yield anything, everything to the victor.  And this ill-defined impression was singularly true, for she was in a passion of self-sacrifice.  She felt that one who had been so generous and self-forgetful had a right to all that a true man could ask, and that it would be base in her to refuse.  The greater the sacrifice the more gladly she would make it, in order that she too might prove that a Southern girl could not be surpassed in noblesse oblige by a Northern man.  She was in one of those supreme moods in which men and women are swayed by one dominant impulse, and all other considerations become insignificant.  The fact that those she loved were looking on was no restraint upon her feeling, and the sympathizing presence of the clergyman added to it.  Indeed her emotion was almost religious.  The man who had saved her from prison and from shame—­far more:  the man who was ready to give all he had to rescue her fallen father—­was before her, and without a second’s hesitation she would have gone into a torture-chamber for the sake of this generous friend.  She wanted him to see his absolute power.  She wanted him to know that he had carried her prejudice, her dislike by storm, and had won the right to dictate his terms.  Because she did not love him she was so frank in her abandon.  If he had held her heart’s love she would have been shy, were she under tenfold greater obligations.  She did not mean to be unmaidenly—­she was not so, for her unconscious delicacy saved her—­but she was at his feet as truly as the “devotee” is prostrate and helpless before the car of Juggernaut.  But Roger was no grim idol, and he was too inexperienced, too modest to understand her.  As he held her throbbing palm he looked a little wonderingly into her flushed face and tear-gemmed eyes that acknowledged him lord and master without reserve; then he smiled and said in a low, half-humorous tone, “I shan’t be an ogre to you—­you won’t be afraid of me any longer, Miss Mildred?”

“No,” she replied impetuously; “you are the truest and best friend a woman ever had.  Oh, I know it—­I know it now.  After what you said about papa, I should despise myself if I did not know it.”

She saw all his deep, long-repressed passion leap into his face and eyes, and in spite of herself she recoiled from it as from a blow.  Ah, Mildred, your will is strong, your gratitude is boundless, your generous enthusiasm had swept you away like a tide, but your woman’s heart is stronger and greater than all, and he has seen this truth unmistakably.  The passion died out of his face like a flame that sinks down to the hidden, smouldering fire that produced it.  He gave her hand a strong pressure as he said quietly, “I am indeed your friend—­never doubt it;” then he turned away decidedly, and although his leave-taking from Mrs. Jocelyn and Belle was affectionate, they felt rather than saw there was an inward struggle for self-mastery, which made him, while quiet in manner, anxious to get away.