heaving in stern triumph, her sister drooping, Madame Emerly standing at
the window.

The craven's first instinct for safety, quick as the cavern lynx for
light, set her on the idea that she was abandoned: it whispered of
quietness if she submitted.

And thus she reasoned: Had Alvan taken her, she would not have been
guilty of more than a common piece of love-desperation in running to
him, the which may be love's glory when marriage crowns it. By his
rejecting her and leaving her, he rendered her not only a runaway, but
a castaway. It was not natural that he should leave her; 'not natural in
him to act his recent part; but he had done it; consequently she was at
the mercy of those who might pick her up. She was, in her humiliation
and dread, all of the moment, she could see to no distance; and
judging of him, feeling for herself, within that contracted circle of
sensation--sure, from her knowledge of her cowardice, that he had done
unwisely--she became swayed about like a castaway in soul, until her
distinguishing of his mad recklessness in the challenge of a power
greater than his own grew present with her as his personal cruelty to
the woman who had flung off everything, flung herself on the tempestuous
deeps, on his behalf. And here she was, left to float or founder! Alvan
had gone. The man rageing over the room, abusing her 'infamous lover,
the dirty Jew, the notorious thief, scoundrel, gallowsbird,' etc., etc.,
frightful epithets, not to be transcribed--was her father. He had come,
she knew not how. Alvan had tossed her to him.

Abuse of a lover is ordinarily retorted on in the lady's heart by the
brighter perception of his merits; but when the heart is weak, the
creature suffering shame, her lover the cause of it, and seeming cruel,
she is likely to lose all perception and bend like a flower pelted. Her
cry to him: 'If you had been wiser, this would not have been!' will sink
to the inward meditation: 'If he had been truer!'--and though she does
not necessarily think him untrue for charging him with it, there is
already a loosening of the bonds where the accusation has begun. They
are not broken because they are loosened: still the loosening of them
makes it possible to cut them with less of a snap and less pain.

Alvan had relinquished her he loved to brave the tempest in a frail
small boat, and he certainly could not have apprehended the furious
outbreak she was exposed to. She might so far have exonerated him