hold slave against the domestic
tyrant. If I had ever been harsh or unjust to you, if I had made your
life unhappy by caprice or by severity, I could understand. But you of
all have had least reason to complain. Not Enva's jealous temper, not
Leenoo's spite, ever suggested to them the idea which came so easily
and was so long and deliberately cherished in your breast."

She rose and faced me, and there was something of contempt in the eyes
that answered mine for this once with the old fearless frankness.

"I had no reason to hate you? Not certainly for the kind of injury
which commonly provokes women to risk the lives their masters have
made intolerable. That your discipline was the lightest ever known in
a household, I need not tell you. That it fell more lightly, if
somewhat oftener, on me than on others, you know as well as I. Put all
the correction or reproof I ever received from you into one, and
repeat it daily, and never should I have complained, much less dreamed
of revenge. You think Enva or Leenoo might less unnaturally, less
unreasonably, have turned upon you, because your measure to their
faults was somewhat harder and your heart colder to them! You did not
scruple to make a favourite of me after a fashion, as you would never
have done even of Eunane. You could pet and play with me, check and
punish me, as a child who would not 'sicken at the sweets, or be
humbled by the sandal.' You forbore longer, you dealt more sternly
with them, because, forsooth, they were women and I a baby. I, who was
not less clever than Eunane, not less capable of love, perhaps of
devotion to you, than Eveena, _I_ might rest my head on your knee when
she was by, I might listen to your talk when others were sent away; I
was too much the child, too little the woman, to excite your distrust
or her jealousy. Do you suppose I think better of you, or feel the
more kindly towards you, that you have not taken vengeance? No! still
you have dealt with me as a child; so untaught yet by that last
lesson, that even a woman's revenge cannot make you treat me as a
woman! Clasfempta! you bear, I believe, outside, the fame of a wise
and a firm man; but in these little hands you have been as weak a fool
as the veriest dotard might have been;--and may be yet."

"As you will," I answered, stung into an anger which at any rate
quelled the worst pain I had felt when I entered the room. "Fool or
sage, Eive, I was your fellow-creature, your protector, an