“That is all very well,” said Edmund; though he paused with a stare of mounting dismay in his beautiful eyes, larger and more liquid than ever by reason of his illness--those eyes which haunted Rosalind’s imagination. “That is all very well: but it is not as if you were a stranger: when they know who I am--when I have you to answer for me--” A flicker of self-assertion came into her eyes. “Why do you think they should care for me or my recommendation? You do not,” she said. He laughed. “That’s quite different. Perhaps they know more--and I am sure they know less--than I do. I should think you would like them to know about me for your own sake.” She turned away with once more a rapid flush restoring momentary youth to her countenance. She was so changed that it seemed to her, as she caught a glimpse of herself, languidly moving across the room, in the large, dim mirror opposite, that no one who belonged to her former existence would now recognize her. And there was truth in what he said. It would be better for her, for her own sake, that the family from whom she was separated should know everything there was to tell. After the first horror lest they should know, there had come a revulsion of feeling, and she had consented in her mind that to inform them of everything would be the best, though she still shrank from it. But even if she had strength to make that supreme effort it could do her no good. Nothing, they had said, no explanation, no clearing up, would ever remove the ban under which she lay. And it would be better to go down to her grave unjustified than to place Rosalind in danger. She looked back upon the convalescent as he resumed fretfully the book which was for the moment his only way of amusing himself. Illness had cleared away from Edmund’s face all the traces of self-indulgence which she had seen there. It was a beautiful face, full of apparent meaning and sentiment, the eyes full of tenderness and passion--or at least what might seem so in other lights, and to spectators less dismally enlightened than herself. A young soul like Rosalind, full of faith and enthusiasm, might take that face for the face of a hero, a poet. Ah! this was a cruel thought that came to her against her will, that stabbed her like a knife as it came. She said to herself tremulously that in other circumstances, with other people, he might have been, might even be, all that his face told. Only with her from the beginning everything had gone wrong--which again, in some subtile way, according to those revenges which everything that is evil brings with it, was her fault and not his. But Rosalind must not be led to put her faith upon promises which were all unfulfilled. Rosalind must not run any such risk. Whatever should happen, she could not expose to so great a danger another woman, and that her own child. But there were other means of setting the wheels of fate in motion, with which Madame Trevanion had nothing to do. CHAPTER XL.