ent up a caterwaul. Her little brother howled in duet.
Then father turned on them.

"Aw, shut up or I'll--"

He did not finish his sentence. He rarely finished anything--except
his meals. He left his children crying and his wife in a new distress;
but then, revolutions cannot pause for women and children.

When he had gone, and Sister's tears had dried on her smutty face,
Mrs. Nuddle picked up the smitten and trampled picture of England's
reigning beauty and thought how lucky Miss W. was to be in England,
blissful on Sir and Lady Somebody-or-other's estate.

CHAPTER VIII

When Mr. Verrinder left Marie Louise he took from her even the props
of hostility. She had nothing to lean on now, nobody to fight with for
life and reputation. She had only suspense and confusion. Agitated
thoughts followed one another in waves across her soul--grief for her
foster-father and mother, memory of their tendernesses, remorse for
seeming to have deserted them in their last hours, remorse for having
been the dupe of their schemes, and remorse for that remorse, grief at
losing the lovable, troublesome children, creature distress at giving
up the creature comforts of the luxurious home, the revulsion of her
unfettered mind and her restless young body at the prospect of
exchanging liberty and occupation for the half-death of an idle
cell--a kind of coffin residence--fear of being executed as a spy, and
fear of being released to drag herself through life with the ball and
chain of guilt forever rolling and clanking at her feet.

Verrinder's mind was hardly more at rest when he left her and walked
to his rooms. He carried the regret of a protector of England who had
bungled his task and let the wards of his suspicion break loose. The
fault was not his, but he would never escape the reproach. He had no
taste for taking revenge on the young woman. It would not salve his
pride to visit on her pretty head the thwarted punishments due Sir
Joseph and his consort in guilt. Besides, in spite of his cynicism, he
had been touched by Marie Louise's sincerities. She proved them by the
very contradictions of her testimony, with its history of keen
intelligence alternating with curious blindness. He knew how people
get themselves all tangled up in conflicting duties, how they let
evils slide along, putting off till to-morrow the severing of the
cords and the stepping forth with freedom from obligation. He knew
that the very best people, being t