s
prisoner. He reflected with no small admiration upon the quick resource
and decision that she had displayed; how, in spite of her almost
child-like frankness, she had beguiled him into turning his back to the
noose when a supposed necessity pressed her. He meditated for a few
minutes upon other girls for whom he had experienced a more or less
particular admiration, and it seemed to him that the characters of these
damsels became wan and insipid by comparison. He began to have a
presentiment that Love was now about to strike in earnest upon the harp
of his life, but he could not think that the circumstances of this
present attraction were propitious. What could he say to this girl, so
adorably strong-minded, to convince her of his claim to be again treated
as a man and a brother? Letters? He had offered them to her last night,
and she had replied that any one could write letters. Should he show
that he was not penniless? She might tell him in the same tone that it
was wealth ill-gotten. It was no doubt her very ignorance of the world
that, when suspicion had once occurred, made her reject as unimportant
these evidences of his respectability, but he had no power to give her
the eyes of experience.

These thoughts tormented him as he stood looking out of the window at
the ever-increasing volume of the snow. How long would he be detained a
prisoner in this house, and, when the roads were free, how could he find
for Madge any absolute proof of his innocence? The track of the midnight
thief was lost for ever in the snow; if he had succeeded in escaping as
mysteriously as he had come--but here Courthope's mind refused again to
enter upon the problem of the fiend-like enemy and the impassable
snowfields, which in the hours of darkness he had already given up,
perceiving the futility of his speculation until further facts were
known.

Courthope strolled through the rooms, the doors of which were now open.
Morin permitted this scant liberty chiefly, the prisoner thought,
because of a wholesome fear of being kicked. In the library at the back
of the drawing-room he found amusement in reading the titles of the
books down one long shelf and up another. Every book to which Madge had
had access had an interest for him. Three cases were filled with books
of law and history; there was but one from which the books had of late
been frequently taken. It was filled with romance and poetry, nothing so
late as the middle of the present ce