"Oh, if I were only good and innocent like you!" she cried, piteously; "how I detest myself as I stand here before you!--how loathsome--how hateful I am!" "No, no," murmured Christabel, soothingly, "you are not hateful: it is only impenitent sin that is hateful. You were led into wrong-doing because you were ignorant of right--there was no one to teach you--no one to uphold you. And he who tempted you is in duty bound to make amends. Trust me--trust me--it is better for my peace as well as for yours that he should do his duty. And now good-by--I have stayed too long already." Again Stella Mayne fell on her knees and clasped this divine visitant's hand. It seemed to this weak yet fervid soul almost as if some angel guest had crossed her threshold. Christabel stooped and would have kissed the actress's forehead. "No," she cried, hysterically, "don't kiss me--don't--you don't know. I should feel like Judas." "Good-by, then. Trust me." And so they parted. A tall man, with an iron-grey moustache and a soldier-like bearing, came out of a little study, cigarette in hand, as the outer door closed on Christabel. "Who the deuce is that thoroughbred-looking girl?" asked this gentleman. "Have you got some of the neighbouring swells to call upon you, at last? Why, what's the row, Fishky, you've been crying?" Fishky was the stage-carpenters', dressers' and supernumeraries' pronunciation of the character which Miss Mayne acted nightly, and had been sportively adopted by her intimates as a pet name for herself. "That lady is Miss Courtenay." "The lady Hamleigh is going to marry? What the devil is she doing in this _galère_? I hope she hasn't been making herself unpleasant?" "She is an angel." "With all my heart. Hamleigh is very welcome to her, so long as he leaves me my dear little demon," answered the soldier, smiling down from his altitude of six feet two at the sylph-like form in the Watteau gown. "Oh, how I wish I had never seen your face," said Stella: "I should be almost a good woman, if there were no such person as you in the world." END OF VOL. I. End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Mount Royal, Volume 1 of 3, by Mary Elizabeth Braddon