as the other point, and on that her mind rested long.

"I think you ought to be ashamed of what you said to me,--so soon
after the old man's death."

She sat long in silence thinking of it, meditating whether he had
been true in that,--whether it did behove her to repent her harshness
to the man. She remembered well her words;--"We take presents from
those we love, not from those we despise."

They had been hard words--quite unjustifiable unless he had made
himself guilty of something worse than conduct that was simply
despicable. Not because he had been a poor creature, not because he
had tormented the old man's last days by an absence of all generous
feeling, not because he had been altogether unlike what, to her
thinking, a Squire of Llanfeare should be, had she answered him with
those crushing words. It was because at the moment she had believed
him to be something infinitely worse than that.

Grounding her aversion on such evidence as she had,--on such evidence
as she thought she had,--she had brought against him her heavy
accusation. She could not tell him to his face that he had stolen
the will, she could not accuse him of felony, but she had used such
quick mode of expression as had come to her for assuring him that
he stood as low in her esteem as a felon might stand. And this she
had done when he was endeavouring to perform to her that which had
been described to him as a duty! And now he had turned upon her and
rebuked her,--rebuked her as he was again endeavouring to perform the
same duty,--rebuked her as it was so natural that a man should do who
had been subjected to so gross an affront!

She hated him, despised him, and in her heart condemned him. She
still believed him to have been guilty. Had he not been guilty, the
beads of perspiration would not have stood upon his brow; he would
not have become now red, now pale, by sudden starts; he would not
have quivered beneath her gaze when she looked into his face. He
could not have been utterly mean as he was, had he not been guilty.
But yet,--and now she saw it with her clear-seeing intellect, now
that her passion was in abeyance,--she had not been entitled to
accuse him to his face. If he were guilty, it was for others to find
it out, and for others to accuse him. It had been for her as a lady,
and as her uncle's niece, to accept him in her uncle's house as her
uncle's heir. No duty could have compelled her to love him, no duty
would have required her