"What think you I care for my reputation?" she whispered. "What think you? Harry Wingfield, you cannot do this monstrous thing. You cannot be so lost to all honour as to let my sister--You cannot, and you a convict--" Then, indeed, for the first time in my life and the last I answered a woman as if she were a man, and on an equal footing of antagonism with me. "Madam," I replied, "I will maintain my honour against your own." But she seemed to make no account of what I said. Indeed I have often wondered whether a woman, when she is in pursuit of any given end, can progress by other methods than an ant, which hath no power of circuitousness, and will climb over a tree with long labour and pain rather than skirt it, if it come in her way. Straight at her purpose she went. "Harry, Harry," she said, still in that sharp whisper, "you will not, you cannot--she is but a child." Then, before I could reply, out ran Mary Cavendish herself, and was close at my side, turning an angry face upon her sister. "Catherine," she cried out, "how dare you? I am no child. Think you that I do not know my own mind? How dare you? You shall not come between Harry and me! I am his before the whole world. I will not have it, Catherine!" Then Catherine Cavendish, awakening such bewilderment and dismay in me as I had never felt, looked at her sister, and said in a voice which I can hear yet: "Have thy way then, sister; but 'tis over thy own sister's heart." "What mean you?" Mary asked breathlessly. "I love him!" said Catherine. I felt the hot blood mount to my head, and I knew what shame was. I turned to retreat. I knew not what to do, but Mary's voice stopped me. It rang out clear and pitiless, with that pitilessness of a great love. "And what is that to me, Catherine?" she cried out. "Sure it is but to thy shame if thou hast loved unsought and confessed unasked. And if I had ten thousand sisters, and they all in love with him, as well they might be, for there is no one like him in the whole world, over all their hearts would I go, rather than he should miss me for but a second, if he loved me. Think you that aught like that can make a difference? Think you that one heart can outweigh two, and the misery of one be of any account before that of three?" Then suddenly she looked sharply at her sister and cried out angrily: "Catherine Cavendish, I know what this means. 'Tis but another device to part us. You love him not. You have hated him from the first. You have hated him, and he is no more guilty than you be. 'Tis but a trick to turn me from him. Fie, think you that will avail? Think you that a sister's heart counts with a maid before her lover's? Little you know of love and lovers to think that."