, after the reading
of the will, Sir Henry Harcourt should insist on taking his wife back
with him, how could he protect her--he, of all men in the world?

"You will not give me up to him!" she said, wildly. "If you do, my
blood will lie upon your head. George! George! say that you will save
me from that! To whom can I look now but to you?"

"I do not think he will force you away with him."

"But if he does? Will you stand by and see me so used?"

"Certainly not; but, Caroline--"

"Well."

"It will be better that I should not be driven to interfere. The
world will forget that I am your cousin, but will remember that I was
once to have been your husband."

"The world! I am past caring for the world. It is nothing to me now
if all London knows how it is with me. I have loved, and thrown away
my love, and tied myself to a brute. I have loved, and do love; but
my love can only be a sorrow to me. I do not fear the world; but God
and my conscience I do fear. Once, for one moment, George, I thought
that I would fear nothing. Once, for one moment, I was still willing
to be yours; but I remembered what you would think of me if I should
so fall, and I repented my baseness. May God preserve me from such
sin! But, for the world--why should you or I fear the world?"

"It is for you that I fear it. It would grieve me to hear men speak
lightly of your name."

"Let them say what they please; the wretched are always trodden on.
Let them say what they please. I deserved it all when I stood before
the altar with that man; when I forbade my feet to run, or my mouth
to speak, though I knew that I hated him, and owned it to my heart.
What shall I do, George, to rid me of that sin?"

She had risen and taken hold of his arm when first she asked him to
protect her, and she was still standing beside the chair on which
he sat. He now rose also, and said a few gentle words, such as he
thought might soothe her.

"Yes," she continued, as though she did not heed him, "I said to
myself almost twenty times during that last night that I hated him in
my very soul, that I was bound in honour even yet to leave him--in
honour, and in truth, and in justice. But my pride forbade it--my
pride and my anger against you."

"It is useless to think of it now, dear."

"Ah, yes! quite useless. Would that I had done it then--then, at the
last moment. They asked me whether I would love that man. I whispered
inwardly to myself that I loathed him; but my