Not that I, of course, am of any importance save as coming from this house, as--as--in some degree your delegate, Sir Charles." "Indeed ?" he said.
"Yes, indeed," Theresa almost hysterically repeated.
For here--if anywhere--was her chance, as she recognized.

Never again might she be thus near to him, alone with him--the normal routine made it wholly improbable .-- And at midnight too.

For the unaccustomed lateness of the hour undoubtedly added to her ferment, provoking in her obscure and novel hopes and hungers.

Hence she blindly and--her action viewed from a certain angle--quite heroically precipitated herself.

Heroically, because the odds were hopelessly adverse, her equipment, whether of natural or artificial, being so conspicuously slender.