But Nancy looked down at her face unmoved, with a little, hard smile. ’Accidents will happen,’ she said coolly. ’We must all die, surely. Men will be men. To talk as you do is sheer hysterics. You are a child.’ ’I am a woman!’ cried Alison, ’and I see with a woman’s eyes.’ ’You ought to concede,’ Nancy continued, unmoved, ’that our friend has acted by the lass as handsomely as anyone could expect. He sent money. I’ve reason to know he would have acknowledged her child had the silly wench but given him the chance. He’s all generosity, kindness, warmth. Didn’t I give you his very words this morning—"I’d wipe the tears from all eyes if I could"?’ ’’Twould be far better, I think,’ cried Alison, ’that he should try first to cause no tears to flow. I see no beauty, Nancy, in beautiful words when cruel, heedless acts go with them.’ Nancy shrugged her shoulders. ’You’ve no understanding of a poet, Ally,’ she said, with a superior and pitying air. But Alison rose to her feet, feeling a sudden courage to say that which had long burned upon her tongue. ’Oh! Nancy, Nancy,’ she cried, ’is it for _this_ man that you—’ ’That I _what_?’ said Nancy, turning fiercely upon her friend. ’That you forget,’ whispered Alison, stammeringly, ’forget that you are Willy and Danny’s mother, and—and—a wife, Nancy!’ From cheek to brow, from her neck to her very ears, Nancy turned scarlet at the words, and her eyes blazed with anger. ’How _dare_ you, Alison Graham,’ she said, ’how dare you say such words to me? _I_ forget myself—I, who remember hourly that I am bound—bound by an iron chain to an odious fate? Ah, were I free!’—she clenched her little hands, and her whole tiny frame was shaken with the vehemence of her passion, ’were I free, should I be here?—and he—he, as he is—left to the machinations of the vulgar, and driven to demean himself with filthy peasants?’ She had risen, and stood over Alison, blazing with jealousy as well as rage—not jealousy of the luckless dead victim of the poet’s passions, but, as it happened, of Jean Armour, of whose ascendency over the Bard she was mortally suspicious. But now she turned all the vials of her wrath on Alison. ’You, to misunderstand me!’ she cried. ’You, whom I have trusted, to turn again and rend me! But you are like the rest of the world—evil-minded! You read wickedness when there is only the innocence and true nobility of great minds. You are incapable of understanding friendship. I despise and rise above your mean suspicions—they are unworthy of my thoughts. But if the viper I had cherished and nursed to warmth in my bosom had turned and stung me, I could not have been more pained!’ Saying which, with a toss of her head and a fine rustle of petticoats, Nancy flounced out of the room, slamming the door behind her.