e. Here was another
confession. The proximity of the trial acted like fire on her faded
recollection of incidents. It may be that partly the shame of alluding
to them had blocked her woman's memory. For one curious operation of
the charge of guiltiness upon the nearly guiltless is to make them paint
themselves pure white, to the obliteration of minor spots, until the
whiteness being acknowledged, or the ordeal imminent, the spots recur
and press upon their consciences. She resumed, in a rapid undertone:
'You know that a certain degree of independence had been, if not granted
by him, conquered by me. I had the habit of it. Obedience with him is
imprisonment--he is a blind wall. He received a commission, greatly to
his advantage, and was absent. He seems to have received information of
some sort. He returned unexpectedly, at a late hour, and attacked me at
once, middling violent. My friend--and that he is! was coming from the
House for a ten minutes' talk, as usual, on his way home, to refresh him
after the long sitting and bear-baiting he had nightly to endure. Now
let me confess: I grew frightened; Mr. Warwick was "off his head," as
they say-crazy, and I could not bear the thought of those two meeting.
While he raged I threw open the window and put the lamp near it, to
expose the whole interior--cunning as a veteran intriguer: horrible, but
it had to be done to keep them apart. He asked me what madness possessed
me, to sit by an open window at midnight, in view of the public, with a
damp wind blowing. I complained of want of air and fanned my forehead. I
heard the steps on the pavement; I stung him to retort loudly, and I was
relieved; the steps passed on. So the trick succeeded--the trick! It
was the worst I was guilty of, but it was a trick, and it branded me
trickster. It teaches me to see myself with an abyss in my nature full
of infernal possibilities. I think I am hewn in black rock. A woman who
can do as I did by instinct, needs to have an angel always near her, if
she has not a husband she reveres.'

'We are none of us better than you, dear Tony; only some are more
fortunate, and many are cowards,' Emma said. 'You acted prudently in
a wretched situation, partly of your own making, partly of the
circumstances. But a nature like yours could not sit still and moan.
That marriage was to blame! The English notion of women seems to be that
we are born white sheep or black; circumstances have nothing to do
with our col