Aminta and Lady Ormont might think as one or diversely of the executioner's blow she had undergone.

She was a married woman, and she probably regarded the wedding by law as the end a woman has to aim at, and is annihilated by hitting; one flash of success, and then extinction, like a boy's cracker on the pavement.

Not an elevated image, but closely resembling that which her alliance with Lord Ormont had been! At the same time, no true lover of a woman advises her--imploring is horrible treason--to slip the symbolic circle of the law from her finger, and have in an instant the world for her enemy.

She must consent to be annihilated, and must have no feelings; particularly no mind.

The mind is the danger for her.