u consider it prudery on my part to disapprove
of your waltzing with Mr Fitzgerald in the manner you have
described,--or, indeed, in any other manner,--you and I must differ
so totally about the meaning of words and the nature of things that
we had better part."

"Alice, you are the unkindest creature that ever lived. You are as
cold as stone. I sometimes think that you can have no heart."

"I don't mind your saying that. Whether I have a heart or not I will
leave you to find out for yourself; but I won't be called a prude by
you. You know you were wrong to dance with that man. What has come of
it? What have you told me yourself this morning? In order to preserve
you from misery and destruction, Mr Palliser has given up all his
dearest hopes. He has had to sacrifice himself that he might save
you. That, I take it, is about the truth of it,--and yet you tell me
that you have done no wrong."

"I never said so." Now she had come back to her chair by the window,
and was again sitting in that crouching form. "I never said that I
was not wrong. Of course I was wrong. I have been so wrong throughout
that I have never been right yet. Let me tell it on to the end, and
then you can go away if you like, and tell me that I am too wicked
for your friendship."

"Have I ever said anything like that, Cora?"

"But you will, I dare say, when I have done. Well; what do you think
my senior duenna did,--the female one, I mean? She took my own
carriage, and posted off after Mr Palliser as hard as ever she could,
leaving the male duenna on the watch. I was dancing as hard as I
could, but I knew what was going on all the time as well as though I
had heard them talking. Of course Mr Palliser came after me. I don't
know what else he could do, unless, indeed, he had left me to my
fate. He came there, and behaved so well,--so much like a perfect
gentleman. Of course I went home, and I was prepared to tell him
everything, if he spoke a word to me,--that I intended to leave him,
and that cart-ropes should not hold me!"

"To leave him, Cora!"

"Yes, and go with that other man whose name you won't let me mention.
I had a letter from him in my pocket asking me to go. He asked me
a dozen times that night. I cannot think how it was that I did not
consent."

"That you did not consent to your own ruin and disgrace?"

"That I did not consent to go off with him,--anywhere. Of course it
would have been my own destruction. I'm not such a fool as no