“Was it a plant, after all? Did the old man want to put me off the track of Captain Pullen? Margaret Pullen is staying in the house--he said so--had she asked him to get rid of me if possible? After all, am I torturing myself by believing the story of my fatal power to be true, when it was only a ruse to get rid of me? The Baroness said the same thing, but she was mad about poor Bobby and would have said anything to annoy me--and, after all, what does it amount to? The baby died in teething--heaps of babies do--and Bobby was consumptive from the first--I have heard Miss Wynward say so, and would have died anyway, as he grew to be a man and had larger demands made upon his physical strength. And for the others--what happened to them, happens to all the world. It is _fortune de guerre_; people drop every day like rotten sheep;--everyone might accuse himself of causing the death of his neighbour. I have been frightening myself with a chimera. Anthony said so, and he must know better than I! And I can’t give up Tony--_I can’t, I can’t, I can’t!_ It is of no use thinking of it! Besides, he wouldn’t let me! He would never leave me alone, until I had consented to marry him, so I may as well do it at the first as at the last.” But the tide of triumphant feeling would be succeeded by a wave of despondency, which threatened to upset all her casuistry. “But if--_if_--it should be true, and Anthony should--should--Oh! God! Oh! God! I dare not think of it! I will kill myself before it shall occur.” When the morning dawned it found her quite undecided--lamenting her unfortunate fate one instant, and declaring that she could never give up her lover the next. She tore off her clothes and took a cold bath, and re-robed herself, but she was looking utterly ill and exhausted when Pennell burst in upon her at eleven o’clock. “Well, darling,” he exclaimed, “and have you made up your mind by this time? Which death am I to die?--suffocated in your dear embrace, or left to perish of cold and hunger outside?” “O! Tony,” she cried, throwing herself into his arms, “I don’t know what to say! I have not closed my eyes all night, trying to decide what will be for the best. And I am as far off as ever--only I can never, _never_ consent to do anything that shall work you harm!” “Then I shall decide for you,” exclaimed her lover, “and that is that you make me and yourself happy, and forget all the rubbish these people have been telling you! Depend upon it, whatever they may have said was for their own gratification, and not yours, and that they would be quick enough to accept the lot that lies before you, were it in their power!” “I have been so lonely and friendless all my life,” said Harriet, sobbing in his arms, “and I have longed for love and sympathy so much, and now that they have come to me, it is hard, Oh! _so_ hard, to have to give them up.”