ded to which was a
vague desire to lanch her own anathema maranatha at Royston Keene.

Dick Tresilyan took the whole thing with remarkable coolness, not to say
complacency. He nodded his head, and smiled, and winked cunningly aside
at Molyneux, as if to intimate that he had known all about it long ago,
and, indeed, so far he had been admitted into the major's confidence on
the night when the latter was supposed to have "lost his head." By what
sophistries Royston had succeeded in masking his purpose and making his
case good, even to such an unsuspicious mind and easy morality, the
devil could best tell, who in such schemes had rarely failed him.

We have left Cecil to the last. My proud, beautiful Cecil--was she not
born for better things than to be made the prize of all those plottings
and counter-plottings--to surrender the key of her heart's treasures to
one who was unworthy to kiss the hem of her robe--and now to have her
self-command tried so cruelly to gratify the wounded vanity of a weak,
shallow enthusiast?

She did not flinch or start when Mr. Fullarton's words caught her ear,
but a heavy, chill faintness stole over her, till she felt all her limbs
benumbed, and every thing before her eyes grew misty and dim. The
numbness passed away almost immediately, but still the figures around
her appeared distorted and fantastically exaggerated; they seemed to be
tossing and whirling round one steadfast centre, as the dead leaves in
winter eddy round the marble head of a statue; that single centre-object
remained, throughout, distinct and unaltered in its aspect, while all
else was confused and uncertain--the face of Royston Keene. The sight of
that face--not defiant or even stern, but immutable in its cold
tranquillity--acted on Cecil as a magical restorative; it seemed as
though he were able, by some mesmeric influence, to impart to her a
portion of his own miraculous self-control. Before his reply to the
chaplain was ended, she threw back her proud head with the old imperial
gesture, as if scorning her own momentary weakness; no mist or shadow
clouded the brilliant violet eyes; she might speak safely now, without
risking a false note in the music. It was no light peril that she
escaped; the betrayal of emotion under such circumstances would have
weighed down a meeker spirit than The Tresilyan's with a sense of
ineffaceable shame; for remember--however marked her partiality for
Keene might have been--there had been no