t she would write
a line to Rebecca Loth, and tell the Jewess that the Jew was now free
to marry whom he would among his own people. And some of the words that
she thought would be fitting for such a letter occurred to her as she
sat there. "I know now that a Jew and a Christian ought not to love
each other as we loved. Their hearts are different." That was her
present purpose, but, as will be seen, she changed it afterwards.

But ever and again as she strengthened her resolution, her thoughts
would run from her, carrying her back to the sweet rapture of some
moment in which the man had been gracious to her; and even while she
was struggling to teach herself to hate him, she would lean her head on
one side, as though by doing so she might once more touch his brow with
hers; and unconsciously she would put out her fingers, as though they
might find their way into his hand. And then she would draw them back
with a shudder, as though recoiling from the touch of an adder.

Hours had passed over her before she began to think whence had come the
paper which Trendellsohn had found in her desk; and then, when the idea
of some fraud presented itself to her, that part of the subject did
not seem to her to be of great moment. It mattered but little who had
betrayed her. It might be Rebecca, or Souchey, or Ruth, or Lotta, or
all of them together. His love, his knowledge of her whom he loved,
should have carried him aloft out of the reach of any such poor trick
as that! What mattered it now who had stolen her key, and gone like
a thief to her desk, and laid this plot for her destruction? That he
should have been capable of being deceived by such a plot against her
was enough for her. She did not even speak to Souchey on the subject.
In the course of the afternoon he came across her as she moved about
the house, looking ashamed, not daring to meet her eyes, hardly able
to mutter a word to her. But she said not a syllable to him about her
desk. She could not bring herself to plead the cause between her and
her lover before her father's servant.

The greater part of the day she passed by her father's bedside, but
whenever she could escape from the room, she seated herself in the
chair against the wall, endeavouring to make up her mind as to the
future. But there was much more of passion than of thought within her
breast. Never, never, never would she forgive him! Never again would
she sit on his knee caressing him. Never again would