And she? It is paying her no great compliment to say that she was equal to the task; it is making no strong accusation against her to say that she had expected and accepted the position from the first. I am at a loss how exactly to set forth this woman's character as I feel it, fearful of enlarging on defects without showing something in their palliation--more fearful of omitting some mental ingredient which might serve to explain the twofold workings of her mind. When she left her home it was under the influence of love and pride; wild girlish adoration of the "swell:" the man with the thick moustache, the white hands, the soft voice, the well-made boots; the man so different in every respect from any thing she had previously known; and girlish pride in enslaving one in social rank far beyond the railway-clerks, merchants' book-keepers, and Custom-House agents, who were marked down as game by her friends and compeers. The step once taken, she was a girl no more; her own natural hardihood came to her aid, and enabled her to hold her own wherever she went. The man her companion,--a man of society simply from mixing with society, but naturally sheepish and stupid,--was amazed at her wondrous calmness and self-possession under all sorts of circumstances. It was an odd sort of _camaraderie_ in which they mixed, both at home and abroad; one where the _laissez-aller_ spirit was always predominant, and where those who said and did as they liked were generally most appreciated; but there was a something in Margaret Dacre which compelled a kind of respect even from the wildest. Where she was, the drink never degenerated into an orgie; and though the _cancans_ and _doubles entendres_ might ring round the room, all outward signs of decency were preserved. In the wild crew with which she was mixed she stood apart, sometimes riding the whirlwind with them, but always directing the storm; and while invariably showing herself the superior, so tempering her superiority as to gain the obedience and respect, if not the regard, of all those among whom she was thrown. How did this come about? Hear it in one sentence--that she was as cold as ice, and as heartless as a stone. She loved the man who had betrayed her with all the passion which had been vouchsafed to her. She loved him, as I have said, at first, from his difference to all her hitherto surroundings; then she loved him for having made her love him and yield to him. She had not sufficient mental power to analyse her own feelings; but she recognised that she had not much heart, was not easily moved; and therefore she gave extraordinary credit, which he did not deserve, to him who had had the power to turn her as he listed.