But had this maiden no guilt, then? Yes, she had guilt of a kind. She was inclined to be vain of her beauty, and her betrayer fastened on that weakness. His flattery pleased her, till she grew, half unconsciously, proud that so fine a gentleman as this captain creature should notice her. This pride begat conceit and a foolish confidence in herself that made her betrayal easy. After what her parents had taught her, she ought to have known better. True pride, a jealous care for her womanhood, should have possessed her. Instead of that she grew giddy, and so was allured to her destruction, like the moth to the candle. Thus far she was guilty; but wilt thou condemn her, O censor? And if so, what of the man? Is it not strange that he, so much more guilty, should go scatheless; that to "society," as the froth at the top insolently calls itself, this base creature, this loathsome seducer, should be as good as ever? For him the lofty mothers of the aristocracy would have no censure, in him their daughters, should whispers of his deeds reach their ears, would have a livelier interest. Amongst most people he would bear repute as a "man of gallantry," a "dreadful lady-killer;" at worst, a "rake" of the dirt-heroic kind that heightened rather than otherwise his eligibility as a match for the fairest of the daughters exhibited for sale in the markets of Belgravia and Mayfair. A man that could ruin a country maiden and then fling her from him, all heedless of her broken heart, with no more thought of her than if she had been a dead dog, must, in the view of society, be a man of spirit. As for the ruined one--faugh! speak not of a thing so repulsive. Let her die in the street. CHAPTER X. BRINGS THE READER BACK TO THE RESPECTABILITIES OF THE PARSONAGE. After the high-born Captain Cecil Wiseman had accomplished his purpose, Sarah Wanless lost her attraction for him. With a fiendish guile he had tracked her down, and now that the chase was over, the victory won, why should he bother himself further? Sarah's beauty was not less; nay, was rather enhanced by the new sadness that shaded her face; but the Captain hardly looked at her again. These confounded wenches were so given to whimpering, and this serene aristocrat hated "scenes." Had Sally been bold and of brazen iniquity, like many of the stained ones he knew in the greenrooms of London theatres, she might possibly have held this lust-consumed reptile a little longer in her power, but being only a simple village maiden slowly awakening to the horror of the fate that had befallen her, the sight of her tearful face made him avoid her. What had he to do with the consequences of sin and folly? Was not the world bound to make his vices pleasant to him? This thoroughbred captain in Her Majesty's Dragoon Guards left Sally then, and sought other attractions, his appetite whetted by his success. Even as he snared Sarah Wanless his roving eye had sighted other game.