“This evil magnificence,” she said--“so strange and so terrible to the poor country girl. Every evening the old lord gets tipsy over his wine; every evening he prays to me on his knees. To-night I thought he would have died--the passion so enraged him. I swear that is all. Oh! I have something cries in me for action; some voice, too, summons me to that dark city where is being born, in agony and travail, the child of our hopes--yours and mine. Not his now--Edouard, not his. I pray only to meet him there, that I may denounce him before the Liberty he has outraged. Take me hence. I am weary of the vile display; weary of being sought the tool to designing men. Take me away to Paris, where the era of the new life is beginning!” In a paroxysm of entreaty, emboldened by her little success, she so tightened the soft embrace of her arms as to bring her lips almost into touch with his. “Have I not proved myself, as I promised, a possession to covet?” she whispered. Now, upon that, Ned came to himself at a leap. He loosened her hands; he repulsed and backed from her. “What shameless thing are you,” he cried--the more violently from a consciousness of his late peril--“that you persist in the face of such rejection as you have already forced from me? I do not desire your favour, madame. To offer it to me here, in this place, is nothing but an insult. Nor, believe me, do I covet the possession of one who----” “Hush!” she cried peremptorily. She stood away from him, panting heavily. Her face glowed with a veritable inner fire. “It is for the last time, monsieur--be assured, it is for the last time,” she breathed out. Then she blazed into uncontrollable passion:-- “Senseless, and a fool! I would have given you a soul to dare and to do. This is not a man but a block. It is right, monsieur: you would freeze the hot life in me--make it of your lead, this poor gold of my humanity. That other was better than you--he was better, for after all he could lie bravely. My God, to be so scorned and flouted! But, there you shall learn--ah, just a little lesson! You are very proud and high, yet I also shall be high if I choose.” She checked herself, came up to and dared him in a rage of mockery. “To-morrow we go to Putney. It is all arranged. And I have but to say the word, the little word, and I am Lady Murk! You twitted me with the child--my God, the man you are! What now, if his ghost--his image--were to thrust itself in between you and----” The door was flung open--pushed, that is to say, with a respectful violence nicely significant of emergency. Jepps stood on the threshold. “My lord, will your lordship please to come at once?” So said this admirable man; and what need was to say more? Ned, in a moment, was in the dining-room.