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 between her shut teeth. 'Think anything you please; but leave me to myself.'

'I cannot promise that. I should feel a coward if I did. I cannot leave you to yourself, for you are your own worst enemy.'

She was silent; she was thinking sternly and unflinchingly, as her father had often thought of his foes, how she was to be rid of this man who would be Este's ruin. All life had been sacred to her in the birds and the beasts around her; but now it seemed to her that she would have no choice but to take his since he would persist and rush upon his doom. She had been frank with him and rude; she had warned him, she had refused him, she had done all she could to turn him aside from what appeared to her his persecution of her, and he would not be persuaded. There seemed no choice for her but to turn on him as the boar was forced to turn on those who drove him from the shelter of his bed of bracken and his screen of oaks.

He had menaced her with the law, and what would the law on herself mean but the discovery, the seizure, the eternal misery of the one for whom she was giving all her own life without counting it as sacrifice?