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My lady twisted her fingers in her loose amber curls, and made as if she would have torn them from her head. But even in that moment of mute despair the unyielding dominion of beauty asserted itself, and she released the poor tangled glitter of ringlets, leaving them to make a halo round her head in the dim firelight.

“I was not wicked when I was young,” she thought, as she stared gloomingly at the fire, “I was only thoughtless. I never did any harm—at least, wilfully. Have I ever been really wicked, I wonder?” she mused. “My worst wickednesses have bean the result of wild impulses, and not of deeply-laid plots. I am not like the women I have read of, who have lain night after night in the horrible darkness and stillness, planning out treacherous deeds, and arranging every circumstance of an appointed crime. I wonder whether they suffered—those women—whether they ever suffered as—”

Her thoughts wandered away into a weary maze of confusion. Suddenly she drew herself up with a proud, defiant gesture, and her eyes glittered with a light that was not entirely reflected from the fire.

“You are mad, Mr. Robert Audley,” she said, “you are mad, and your fancies are a madman’s fancies. I know what madness is. I know its signs and tokens, and I say that you are mad.”

She put her hand to her head, as if thinking of something which confused and bewildered her, and which she found it difficult to contemplate with calmness.

“Dare I defy him?” she muttered. “Dare I? dare I? Will he stop, now that he has once gone so far? Will he stop for fear of me? Will he stop for fear of me, when the thought of what his uncle must suffer has not stopped him? Will anything stop him—but death?”

She pronounced the last words in an awful whisper; and with her head bent forward, her eyes dilated, and her lips still parted as they had been parted in her utterance of that final word “death,” she sat blankly staring at the fire.

“I can’t plot horrible things,” she muttered, presently; “my brain isn’t strong enough, or I’m not wicked enough, or brave enough. If I met Robert Audley in those lonely gardens, as I—”

The current of her thoughts was interrupted by a cautious knocking at her door. She rose suddenly, startled by any sound in the stillness of her room. She rose, and threw herself into a low chair near the fire. She flung her beautiful head back upon the soft cushions, and took a book from the table near her. Insignificant as this action was, it spoke very plainly. It spoke very plainly of ever-recurring fears—of fatal necessities for concealment—of a mind that in its silent agonies was ever alive to the importance of outward effect. It told more plainly than anything else could have told how complete an actress my lady had been made by the awful necessity of her life.

The modest rap at the door was repeated.

“Come in,” cried Lady Audley, in her liveliest tone.

The door was opened with that respectful noiselessness peculiar to a well-bred servant, and a young woman, plainly dressed, and carrying some of the cold March winds in the folds of her garments, crossed the threshold of the apartment and lingered near the door, waiting permission to approach the inner regions of my lady’s retreat.

It was Phoebe Marks, the pale-faced wife of the Mount Stanning innkeeper.

“I beg pardon, my lady, for intruding without leave,” she said; “but I thought I might venture to come straight up without waiting for permission.”

“Yes, yes, Phoebe, to be sure. Take off your bonnet, you wretched, cold-looking creature, and come sit down here.”

Lady Audley pointed to the low ottoman upon which she had herself been seated a few minutes before. The lady’s maid had often sat upon it listening to her mistress’ prattle in the old days, when she had been my lady’s chief companion and confidante,

“Sit down here, Phoebe,” Lady Audley repeated; “sit down here and talk to me; I’m very glad you came here to-night. I was horribly lonely in this dreary place.”