Terence the Judas--the betrayer of the innocent--the snarer of the unwary! Terence, her cousin, whose jocund visage she admitted to be rather dear to her. If he proved so base a scoundrel, in whom then might an earnest soul place trust? Was his perfidy a fall, or original sin? She remembered how she had read wise thoughts in books, wherein sages had explained that our nature is unstable, liable to trip--that none can resist temptation if clothed in the fittest garb. Is not the prayer which should be oftenest on our lips, 'Lead us not, O God, into temptation?' Women are perverse, choosing always the left one, when they ought to take the right turning; and with the perversity of women Doreen chose at once to accept the most distasteful phase of the situation. She took it for granted that Terence was in the wrong, instead of more prudently suspending her judgment till his return from France. The feet of her cousin were cloven. He wore a tail and smelt of brimstone. She stood still beside a paling as she thought of him, and shook it in a rage with both her hands, while a vague feeling of uneasiness came over her in that she should care so much that Terence should prove the Judas. Yet was she not quite justified in her dismay? Was it not natural that her faith in truth and goodness should be thrown out of gear by such low calculating turpitude? Clutching the gnarled paling, the unhappy lady bowed her face on it and burst into sobs which shook her to the centre. Five hundred guineas! That was the sharpest of the many thongs which smote her. She had declined to look at the sordid motive--it was so very mean and vile. But now it clamoured with open palms at the gates of her brain, and shouted deafeningly. Vulgar money troubles are at the bottom of everything that's base! What a pity that there should be such a thing as money! Five hundred guineas! How small--how miserable a sum! He was always in debt, she knew: to such easy-going creatures as he always seemed to be, debt was a state of nature. But could he have sunk so low as this? Was he capable, for five hundred guineas, of suddenly assuming a noble love of motherland, which was a farce--of laying a gin for the feet of persons who had never injured him--nay, whom he reckoned among his dearest friends? For the wretched price of five hundred guineas, could he look her--his cousin, almost his sister--in the face, and endeavour to steal her heart, that he might stick it on a pole for the amusement of fellow-traitors? Traitor! Arch-traitor--wretch! Tears having come to her relief, Doreen sat on the grass and wept, and felt like the wounded beast within the covert.