untered. He was standing exceedingly
near; his face looked very pale; the pupils of his eyes were dilated,
giving them a peculiar, unfamiliar look.

Embarrassed, and yet doubtful that her embarrassment was justified, she
turned away, and, nervously taking a pack of cards from the table,
began to pass them through her fingers.

"I don't know what you mean," she said again. "I don't understand."

Quite suddenly Serracauld laughed; and, passing his arms over hers,
caught her hands, so that the cards fluttered to the table.

"Nonsense!" he said in a sharp, whispering voice--"nonsense! The
prettiest woman of the season not understand!"

He laughed again, and with a swift movement freed her hands; and,
clasping her suddenly and closely, forced her head backwards and bent
his face to hers.

The action was not so much a kiss, as a vehement, almost painful
pressure of his lips upon her mouth--something that stung her to
resentment rather than to fear.

For one instant she remained passive; the next, she had freed herself
with the muscular activity that had always belonged to her slight,
supple frame.

As she drew away from him, she was trembling and her face was white;
but there was a look he had never imagined in her eyes and on her lips.
For one moment it seemed that she meant to speak; and then her lips
closed. She turned away from him and walked out of the room without a
word.

CHAPTER XII

Hardly conscious of her movements, Clodagh left the card-room and
passed down the corridor.

Her only tangible sensations were anger and self-contempt. The thought
that Serracauld, who had seemed less than nothing in the scheme of her
life--Serracauld, with whom she had laughed and jested and flirted
because he was a boy and of no account--should have treated her
lightly; should have presumed to kiss her, to seize her violently in
his arms, was something shameful and intolerable. The simplicity of her
upbringing--the uncontaminated childhood that her country had given
her--rose to confront her in this newest crisis. Vain, frivolous,
foolish she might be, but beneath the vanity, the frivolity, the folly,
she was--and always had been--good, in the primitive, fundamental sense
of the word.

She hurried down the corridor, and down the staircase that she had
ascended so short a time before; but, reaching the ground floor, she
did not turn towards the ballroom, from which the sound of the violins
still floated. Instinct