It was not for some ten minutes that she rose from her knees, and even when she came back to the sitting-room her tremor had not quite subsided.

It had had, verily, two causes: part of it was to be accounted for by her long discussion with Mr.Goodwood, but it might be feared that the rest was simply the enjoyment she found in the exercise of her power.

She sat down in the same chair again and took up her book, but without going through the form of opening the volume.

She leaned back, with that low, soft, aspiring murmur with which she often uttered her response to accidents of which the brighter side was not superficially obvious, and yielded to the satisfaction of having refused two ardent suitors in a fortnight.

That love of liberty of which she had given Caspar Goodwood so bold a sketch was as yet almost exclusively theoretic; she had not been able to indulge it on a large scale.