e him try once more if her effort to
get rid of him originated in pity or fear, and he muttered, "Guineas!
make it guineas, miss, and I'll say 'done.'"

"Not a shilling more, not a farthing," she answered, moving her hand
as if to put it on the bell-pull. "It cannot matter to me," she added,
in a tone of the most complete indifference, "but while I am about
it I think I would rather be the making of an honest man than the
destruction of a rogue."

Her acting was perfect. She seemed so cold, so impassive, so
completely mistress of the position, and all the time her heart was
beating as the gambler's beats, albeit in winning vein, ere he lifts
the box from off the imprisoned dice--as the lion-tamer's beats when
he spurns in its very den the monster that could crush him with a
movement, and that yet he holds in check by an imaginary force,
irresistible only so long as it is unresisted.

Such situations have a horrible fascination of their own. I have even
known them prolonged to gratify a morbid thirst for excitement; but
I think Miss Bruce was chiefly anxious to be released from her
precarious position, and to get rid of her visitor as soon as she
could. Even her resolute nerves were beginning to give way, and she
knew her own powers well enough to mistrust a protracted trial of
endurance. Feminine fortitude is so apt to break down all at once, and
Miss Bruce, though a courageous specimen of her sex, was but a woman
who had wrought herself up for a gallant effort, after all.

She was quite unprepared though for its results. Gentleman Jim
snatched up his pistol, stowed it away in his breast-pocket, as if
heartily ashamed of it, brought out from that receptacle a pearl
necklace and a pair of coral ear-rings, dashed them down on the table
with an imprecation, and looking ridiculously sheepish, thus delivered
himself--

"Five pounds, miss! Five devils! If ever I went for to ask five
shillings of you, or five fardens, may the hands rot off at my wrists
and the teeth drop out of my head. Strike me blind, now, this moment,
in this here room, if I'd take so much as a pin's head that you
valued, not if my life depended on it and there wasn't no other way of
getting a morsel of bread! Look ye here, miss. No offence; I'm but
a rough-and-ready chap, and you're a lady. I never come a-nigh one
afore. Now I know what they mean when they talk of a real lady, and I
see what it is puts such a spirit into them swells as lives with the