interest? In that interest I ground my right to warn and counsel you. I
saw, or fancied I saw, in you a mind congenial to my own; a mind above
the frivolities of your sex,--a mind, in short, with the grasp and
energy of a man's. You were then but a child, you are scarcely yet a
woman; yet have I not given to your intellect the strong food on which
the statesmen of Florence fed their pupil-princes, or the noble Jesuits
the noble men who were destined to extend the secret empire of the
imperishable Loyola?"

"You gave me the taste for a knowledge rare in my sex, I own," answered
Lucretia, with a slight tone of regret in her voice: "and in the
knowledge you have communicated I felt a charm that at times seems to
me to be only fatal. You have confounded in my mind evil and good, or
rather, you have left both good and evil as dead ashes, as the dust and
cinder of a crucible. You have made intellect the only conscience. Of
late, I wish that my tutor had been a village priest!"

"Of late, since you have listened to the pastorals of that meek
Corydon!"

"Dare you despise him? And for what? That he is good and honest?"

"I despise him, not because he is good and honest, but because he is
of the common herd of men, without aim or character. And it is for this
youth that you will sacrifice your fortunes, your ambition, the station
you were born to fill and have been reared to improve,--this youth in
whom there is nothing but the lap-dog's merit, sleekness and beauty! Ay,
frown,--the frown betrays you; you love him!"

"And if I do?" said Lucretia, raising her tall form to its utmost
height, and haughtily facing her inquisitor,--"and, if I do, what then?
Is he unworthy of me? Converse with him, and you will find that the
noble form conceals as high a spirit. He wants but wealth: I can give it
to him. If his temper is gentle, I can prompt and guide it to fame and
power. He at least has education and eloquence and mind. What has Mr.
Vernon?"

"Mr. Vernon? I did not speak of him!"

Lucretia gazed hard upon the Provencal's countenance,--gazed with that
unpitying air of triumph with which a woman who detects a power over
the heart she does not desire to conquer exults in defeating the reasons
that heart appears to her to prompt. "No," she said in a calm voice, to
which the venom of secret irony gave stinging significance,--"no, you
spoke not of Mr. Vernon; you thought that if I looked round, if I looked
nearer, I might have a f