'What has brought her here?' repeated Kainie. 'There is no need to ask that, Mark; the wretched creature is running after you.' 'You must go back,' said the young man. 'Yes, go back—to your dear master,' sneered Kainie. 'I must speak. I must justify myself,' said Zita, with vehemence. 'You wrong me in your thoughts; you wrong me in your words. I am not what you suppose. I am not a bold, bad girl. I do not sell myself for profits. I am in Drownlands' house because I cannot help myself. I have nowhere else whither to go. Why should you and Kainie believe evil of me? Why should'— 'I cannot argue with you,' said Mark. 'This is not the place; this is not the time. I am sorry for you. I can say no more. I thought better of you once.' 'Go, you Cheap Jackess,' said Kainie. 'Unless you had a heart lost to shame, you'd not have come here after Mark at night.' 'You misjudge me in this as in other things,' said Zita, bursting into tears. 'I came here for your good.' 'That's a fine tale,' sneered Kainie. 'We want no good from you, nor do we expect figs of thistles or grapes of thorns.' Mark said nothing, but stepped from the platform. 'I entreat you to listen to me,' said Zita, catching his arm. 'It is not true that Drownlands has left me everything.' 'I cannot attend to this now,' said he, disengaging himself from her grasp. But she again seized him. 'Unsay what you said!' she exclaimed. Her anger was rising and overmastering her grief. 'Unsay those ugly words—that I am the dirt under your feet.' 'I said—but never mind. I regret that you overheard me use such an expression.' 'That is not unsaying it.' Kainie came up and struck Zita with the full force of her heavy hand across the face. 'Take that,' she said; 'I have owed it you. Now the debt is repaid.' Then she stepped on the ice with a 'Mark, I am ready.' 'Go!' cried Zita in towering wrath, stung with pain, maddened with humiliation. 'Go—go under the ice, both of you! I care not! I care not!' CHAPTER XXXVII A CATHERINE WHEEL The words were hardly out of Zita's mouth before they were repented. The anger, the desire for revenge, which had spurted up in her heart, was abated as rapidly as it had risen. Once before she had spoken in violence of anger, and had speedily contradicted her words by her acts. She had bidden Mark go and be hanged or transported for aught she cared; yet no sooner did she learn that he was in actual danger, than she had interfered to deliver him. She had fought for him with Drownlands, and had thrust herself into the witness-box to exculpate him. Stinging now under the moral pain of the sense of wrong done to her, that wounded her in her honour, stinging also under the physical pain caused by the blow of Kainie, a girl for whom she had made the greatest sacrifices, in a blind and inconsiderate explosion of resentment, she had allowed Mark and Kainie, unwarned of their danger, to commit themselves to the treacherous ice.