d
to an ignoble, unworthy coercion; but it had been put on too hard of
late, and her natural character asserted itself under the pressure.
She was in that mood which makes the martyr and the heroine, sometimes
even the criminal, but on which, deaf to reason and insensible to
fear, threats and arguments are equally thrown away.

She had met "Gentleman Jim," according to promise, extorted from her
by menaces of everything that could most outrage her womanly feelings
and tarnish her fair fame before the world--had met him with as much
secrecy, duplicity, and caution as though he were really the favoured
lover for whom she was prepared to sacrifice home, husband, honour,
and all. The housebreaker had mounted a fresh disguise for the
occasion, and flattered himself, to use his own expression, that he
looked "quite the gentleman from top to toe." Could he have known how
this high-bred woman loathed his tawdry ornaments, his flash attire,
his silks and velvets, and flushed face, and dirty, ringed hands and
greasy hair!

Could he have known! He _did_ know, and it maddened him till he forgot
reason, prudence, experience, commonsense--forgot everything but the
present torture, the cruel longing for the impossible, the accursed
conviction (worse than all the stings of drink and sin and remorse)
that this one wild, hopeless desire of his existence could never be
attained.

Therefore, in the lonely street to which a cab had brought her from
the shop where her carriage waited, and which they paced to and fro,
this strangely-assorted pair, he gave vent to his feelings, and broke
out in a paroxysm that roused all his listener's feelings of anger,
resistance, and disgust. She had just offered him so large a sum
of money to quit England for ever, as even Jim, for whom, you must
remember, every sovereign represented twenty shillings' worth of
beer, could not refuse without a qualm. He hesitated, and Maud's face
brightened with a ray of hope that quivered in her eyes like sunlight.
"To sail next week," said he slowly; "to take my last look of ye
to-day. Them's the articles. My last look. Standing there in the
daylight--a _real_ lady! And never to come back no more!"

She clasped her hands--the delicate gloved hands, with their heavy
bracelets at the wrists--and her voice shook while she spoke. "You'll
go; won't you? It will make your fortune; and--and--I'll always think
of you kindly--and--gratefully. I _will_ indeed; so long as you k