memory of her pained submission, but
a palpitating submission, to his caress. She was in his arms again at the
thought of it. He had melted her, and won the confession of her senses by
a surprise, and he owned that never had woman been so vigilantly
self-guarded or so watchful to keep her lover amused and aloof. Such a
woman deserved long service. But then the long service deserved its time
of harvest. Her surging look of reproach in submission pointed to the
golden time, and as he was a man of honour, pledged to her for life, he
had no remorse, and no scruple in determining to exact her dated promise,
on this occasion deliberately. She was the woman to be his wife; she was
his mind's mate: they had hung apart in deference to mere scruples too
long. During the fierce battle of the Session she would be his help, his
fountain of counsel; and she would be the rosy gauze-veiled more than
cold helper and adviser, the being which would spur her womanly
intelligence to acknowledge, on this occasion deliberately, the wisdom of
the step. They had been so close to it! She might call it madness then:
now it was wisdom. Each had complete experience of the other, and each
vowed the step must be taken. As to the secret communicated, he exulted
in the pardonable cunning of the impulse turning him back to her house
after the guests had gone, and the dexterous play of his bait on the
line, tempting her to guess and quit her queenly guard. Though it had not
been distinctly schemed, the review of it in that light added to the
enjoyment. It had been dimly and richly conjectured as a hoped result.
Small favours from her were really worth, thrice worth, the utmost from
other women. They tasted the sweeter for the winning of them artfully--an
honourable thing in love. Nature, rewarding the lover's ingenuity and
enterprise, inspires him with old Greek notions of right and wrong: and
love is indeed a fluid mercurial realm, continually shifting the
principles of rectitude and larceny. As long as he means nobly, what is
there to condemn him? Not she in her heart. She was the presiding
divinity.

And she, his Tony, that splendid Diana, was the woman the world abused!
Whom will it not abuse?

The slough she would have to plunge in before he could make her his own
with the world's consent, was already up to her throat. She must, and
without further hesitation, be steeped, that he might drag her out,
washed of the imputed defilement, and radiant, a