ther that he would not dare to lift his hand
against the King's half brother. She had said the words to give herself
courage, and perhaps in a rush of certainty that the man she loved was a
match for other men, hand to hand, and something more. It was different
now. Little as she yet knew of human nature, she guessed without
reasoning that a man who has been angry, who has wavered and given way
to what he believes to be weakness, and whose anger has then burst out
again, is much more dangerous than before, because his wrath is no
longer roused against another only, but also against himself. More
follies and crimes have been committed in that second tide of passion
than under a first impulse. Even if Mendoza had not fully meant what he
had said the first time, he had meant it all, and more, when he had last
spoken. Once more the vision of fear rose before Dolores' eyes, nobler
now; because it was fear for another and not for herself, but therefore
also harder to conquer.

Inez had ceased from sobbing now, and was sitting quietly in her
accustomed seat, in that attitude of concentrated expectancy of sounds
which is so natural to the blind, that one can almost recognize
blindness by the position of the head and body without seeing the face.
The blind rarely lean back in a chair; more often the body is quite
upright, or bent a little forward, the face is slightly turned up when
there is total silence, often turned down when a sound is already heard
distinctly; the knees are hardly ever crossed, the hands are seldom
folded together, but are generally spread out, as if ready to help the
hearing by the sense of touch--the lips are slightly parted, for the
blind know that they hear by the mouth as well as with their ears--the
expression of the face is one of expectation and extreme attention,
still, not placid, calm, but the very contrary of indifferent. It was
thus that Inez sat, as she often sat for hours, listening, always and
forever listening to the speech of things and of nature, as well as for
human words. And in listening, she thought and reasoned patiently and
continually, so that the slightest sounds had often long and accurate
meanings for her. The deaf reason little or ill, and are very
suspicious; the blind, on the contrary, are keen, thoughtful, and
ingenious, and are distrustful of themselves rather than of others. Inez
sat quite still, listening, thinking, and planning a means of helping
her sister.

But Dolor