blood.... Why not? It would be the sooner over.

Then, at times came that strange woman's pleasure in martyrdom, the
secret pride of suffering unjustly: but even that, after a while, she
cast away from her, as a snare, and tried to believe that she deserved
all her sorrow--deserved it, that is, in the real honest sense of the
word; that she had worked it out, and earned it, and brought it on
herself--how, she knew not, but longed and strove to know. No; it was
no martyrdom. She would not allow herself so silly a cloak of pride;
and she went daily to her favourite "Book of Martyrs," to contemplate
there the stories of those who really innocent, really suffered for
welldoing. And out of that book she began to draw a new and a strange
enjoyment, for she soon found that her intense imagination enabled
her to re-enact those sad and glorious stories in her own person; to
tremble, agonise, and conquer with those heroines who had been for
years her highest ideals--and what higher ones could she have? And
many a night, after extinguishing the light, and closing her eyes, she
would lie motionless for hours on her little bed, not to sleep, but to
feel with Perpetua the wild bull's horns, to hang with St. Maura on
the cross, or lie with Julitta on the rack, or see with triumphant
smile, by Anne Askew's side, the fire flare up around her at the
Smithfield stake, or to promise, with dying Dorothea, celestial
roses to the mocking youth, whose face too often took the form of
Thurnall's; till every nerve quivered responsive to her fancy in
agonies of actual pain, which died away at last into heavy slumber, as
body and mind alike gave way before the strain. Sweet fool! she knew
not--how could she know?--that she might be rearing in herself the
seeds of idiotcy and death: but who that applauds a Rachel or
a Ristori, for being able to make awhile their souls and their
countenances the homes of the darkest passions, can blame her for
enacting in herself, and for herself alone, incidents in which the
highest and holiest virtue takes shape in perfect tragedy?

But soon another, and a yet darker cause of sorrow arose in her. It
was clear, from what Willis had told her, that she had held the lost
belt in her hand. The question was, how had she lost it?

Did her mother know anything about it? That question could not but
arise in her mind, though, for very reverence she dared not put it to
her mother; and with it arose the recollection of her m