But when Mrs Ainslie got home, and began to reflect on the matter, she saw how great a mistake she had made. If she knew him, so did he also know her and all her antecedents. It had given her a thrill of pleasure to think of meeting him, and talking over the past; but it was equally possible to her to betray him, in her new rôle as a respectable member of society: and she knew that she would not hesitate to do so, should it prove necessary. But it was equally possible that he might betray her. It did not take her more than five minutes’ serious thinking, when the first excitement of the discovery was over, to show her that to disclose herself to Lew, and put in his hands a means of ruining her, or of holding her in terror at least, was the last thing that was to be desired. Lew in Colorado, or as a chance exile from that paradise, ready to disappear again into the unknown, was little dangerous, and a chance meeting with him the most amusing accident that was likely to befall her. But Lew in England, or, still worse, Scotland, at her very door, ready on any occasion to inform her new friends who she was or had been, was a very different matter. She owned to herself that she had never done anything so mad or foolish in her life. On the eve of becoming Mr Logan’s wife, of being provided for for the rest of her life, of being looked up to and respected, and an authority in the place--and by one foolish word to throw all this, which was almost certainty, into the chaos of risk and daily danger, at the mercy of a man who could spoil everything if he pleased, or could at least hold the sword over her head and make her existence a burden to her! What a thing was this which she had done! When she saw Mr Logan to the door on that evening, her aspect was more animated and bright than ever, but her heart in reality was quaking. It was foolish of her to take the candle; but it was her habit, and it would have been remarked, she thought in her terror, if she had not done it: and then she stood and looked up and down, still with that light in her hand--thankful that at least the minister was gone, that he would not meet these visitors if they came: then with relief making up her mind that they would not come--that Lew, if he were in hiding, would be as much afraid of her as she of him.