Having gone thus far she began to feel more settled in her mind, satisfied insomuch that she felt she had done the right thing in resigning a position which exposed her to the importunities of a patron who had proved as unprincipled in purpose as he was sensual in inclinations. Then she began to torment herself with the reflection that she had not proved such an icewoman as she had previously imagined herself to be. ‘Yes,’ she owned to herself, ‘there was a moment when the power of his passion moved me, and I could have yielded to the seduction of the senses, pictured by him as the essence of love, until I remembered there was a barrier that might not be moved; no, not for the allurements of a century of deliciousness would I defraud another of one iota of the affection which was sworn for all time to be hers. ‘I have refused, perhaps, the crown of an Empress to take the lowly condition of a poor scholar out of place; but I have remained true to myself, and to my sex, and before all things have kept my heart and hands clean: I have earned the approval of my conscience, and my night-pillow is not made restless with the self-torture of knowing I had inflicted an endless misery on another, and that other made like unto myself; with all the capacities of suffering, having to drink daily of life’s bitterest mortifications. ‘But what a deadly traitor I have narrowly escaped—what a contemptible monster he has proved himself, to thus turn on me like an adder!’ His threat of having her indicted for high treason gave her, however, no uneasiness, for it only inspired her with the utmost scorn. She dismissed it from her mind as having been on his part merely the outcome of ungovernable anger at being exposed before his enemy, as Sadbag undauntedly owned himself to be. How a man could express the most profound attachment for her at one moment, and seek her destruction at the next, seemed to her pure mind so monstrous and wholly unnatural that its possibility in her case was altogether out of the question. That Felicitas would actually go the lengths of formally making such an infamous accusation she could not bring herself to believe. Thus she sat deeply pondering over the situation for at least two hours, unheeding the passage of time in which startling doings were taking place in the outside world, when she was interrupted by a double announcement, dinner, and the advent of Sadbag. ‘In a brown study, I see!’ exclaimed the old man as he entered the apartment, ‘can I be of any use to thee?’ ‘Thrice welcome,’ she answered quickly; ‘this solitude is unbearable: I was longing for some sympathising friend in whose ears I could pour forth my trouble.’ ‘Thou art in a queer quandary, certainly,’ quoth Sadbag in gentle tones, which were not wanting in sly humour, ‘nevertheless, there will be somebody in a bigger by to-morrow morning.’ ‘To whom dost thou refer?’