excuse about the cooling of a bell, as though she cared whether the bell were hot or cold, with the result that she had been thrown into the company of that dreadful Martha the Mare.  After the Mare—­aggravated by Black Meg—­came the Spaniard.  Here again Dirk had shown contemptible indifference and insufficiency, for he allowed her to be forced into the Wolf sledge against her will.  Nay, he had actually consented to the thing.  Next, in a fateful sequence followed all the other incidents of that hideous carnival; the race, the foul, if it was a foul; the dreadful nightmare vision called into her mind by the look upon Montalvo’s face; the trial of the Mare, her own unpremeditated but indelible perjury; the lonely drive with the man who compelled her to it; the exhibition of herself before all the world as his willing companion; and the feast in which he appeared as her cavalier, and was accepted of the simple company almost as an angel entertained by chance.

What did he mean?  Doubtless, for on that point she could scarcely be mistaken, he meant to make love to her, for had he not in practice said as much?  And now—­this was the terrible thing—­she was in his power, since if he chose to do so, without doubt he could prove that she had sworn a false oath for her own purposes.  Also that lie weighed upon her mind, although it had been spoken in a good cause; if it was good to save a wretched fanatic from the fate which, were the truth known, without doubt her crime deserved.

Of course, the Spaniard was a bad man, if an attractive one, and he had behaved wickedly, if with grace and breeding; but who expected anything else from a Spaniard, who only acted after his kind and for his own ends?  It was Dirk—­Dirk—­that was to blame, not so much—­and here again came the rub—­for his awkwardness and mistakes of yesterday, as for his general conduct.  Why had he not spoken to her before, and put her beyond the reach of such accidents as these to which a woman of her position and substance must necessarily be exposed?  The saints knew that she had given him opportunity enough.  She had gone as far as a maiden might, and not for all the Dirks on earth would she go one inch further.  Why had she ever come to care for his foolish face?  Why had she refused So-and-so, and So-and-so and So-and-so—­all of them honourable men—­with the result that now no other bachelor ever came near her, comprehending that she was under bond to her cousin?  In the past she had persuaded herself that it was because of something she felt but could not see, of a hidden nobility of character which after all was not very evident upon the surface, that she loved Dirk van Goorl.  But where was this something, this nobility?  Surely a man who was a man ought to play his part, and not leave her in this false position, especially as there could be no question of means.  She would not have come to him empty-handed, very far from it, indeed.  Oh! were it not for the unlucky fact that she still happened to care about him—­to her sorrow—­never, never would she speak to him again.