Agnes listened in astonishment. “Force you to it?” she repeated. “How can I do that? Do you mean to say my will is stronger than yours?” “Do _you_ mean to say that the candle doesn’t burn the moth, when the moth flies into it?” Lady Montbarry rejoined. “Have you ever heard of such a thing as the fascination of terror? I am drawn to you by a fascination of terror. I have no right to visit you, I have no wish to visit you: you are my enemy. For the first time in my life, against my own will, I submit to my enemy. See! I am waiting because you told me to wait—and the fear of you (I swear it!) creeps through me while I stand here. Oh, don’t let me excite your curiosity or your pity! Follow the example of Mr. Westwick. Be hard and brutal and unforgiving, like him. Grant me my release. Tell me to go.” The frank and simple nature of Agnes could discover but one intelligible meaning in this strange outbreak. “You are mistaken in thinking me your enemy,” she said. “The wrong you did me when you gave your hand to Lord Montbarry was not intentionally done. I forgave you my sufferings in his lifetime. I forgive you even more freely now that he has gone.” Henry heard her with mingled emotions of admiration and distress. “Say no more!” he exclaimed. “You are too good to her; she is not worthy of it.” The interruption passed unheeded by Lady Montbarry. The simple words in which Agnes had replied seemed to have absorbed the whole attention of this strangely-changeable woman. As she listened, her face settled slowly into an expression of hard and tearless sorrow. There was a marked change in her voice when she spoke next. It expressed that last worst resignation which has done with hope. “You good innocent creature,” she said, “what does your amiable forgiveness matter? What are your poor little wrongs, in the reckoning for greater wrongs which is demanded of me? I am not trying to frighten you, I am only miserable about myself. Do you know what it is to have a firm presentiment of calamity that is coming to you—and yet to hope that your own positive conviction will not prove true? When I first met you, before my marriage, and first felt your influence over me, I had that hope. It was a starveling sort of hope that lived a lingering life in me until to-day. _You_ struck it dead, when you answered my question about Ferrari.” “How have I destroyed your hopes?” Agnes asked. “What connection is there between my permitting Ferrari to use my name to Lord Montbarry, and the strange and dreadful things you are saying to me now?”