ion and pain domestic power could inflict, when
released by the terrible alternative of legal prosecution from its
usual limits, breathed more of doubt and terror than of shame or
penitence. But at first it keenly affected me. It was with something
akin to a bodily pang that I heard this fragile girl, so easily
subdued by such rebuke or menace as her companions would scarcely have
affected to fear, now pleading for punishment such as would have
quelled the pride and courage of the most high-spirited of her sex. I
felt the deepest pity, not so much for the fear with which she still
trembled as for the agony of terror she must have previously endured.
Eveena averted from her abject supplications a face in which I read
much pain, but more of what would have been disgust in a less
intensely sympathetic nature. And ere long I saw or felt in Eive's
manner that which caused me suddenly to dismiss Eveena from the room,
as from a presence unfit for her spotless purity and exquisite
delicacy. Finding in me no sign of passionate anger, no readiness, but
reluctance to visit treason with physical pain, Eive's own expression
changed. Unable to conceive the feeling that rendered the course she
had at first expected simply impossible to me, a nature I had utterly
misconceived caught at an idea few women, not experienced in the worst
of life's lessons, would have entertained. The tiny fragile form, the
slight limbs whose delicate proportions seemed to me almost those of
infancy, their irrepressible quivering plainly revealed by the absence
of robe and veil, no man worthy of the name could have beheld without
intense compassion. But such a feeling she could not realise. As her
features lost the sincerity of overwhelming fear, as the drooping lids
failed for one moment to conceal a look of almost assured exultation
in the dark eyes, my soul was suddenly and thoroughly revolted. I had
forgiven the hand aimed at a heart that never throbbed with a pulse
unkind to her. I might have forgotten the treason that requited
tenderness and trust by seeking my life; but I could never forget,
never recover, that moment's insight into thoughts that so outraged an
affection which, if my conscience belied me not, was absolutely
stainless and unselfish.

It cost a strong persistent effort of self-control to address her
again. But a confession full and complete my duty to others compelled
me to enforce. The story of the next hour I never told or can tell. T