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 retraced her steps until once more she sat in the shadow of those solemn chambers which now were hers no more, but opened to the world of men.

A shudder of rage shook her from head to foot; then she bowed her head down upon her knees, and wept bitterly.

She had been betrayed.

Kinder than treachery is the knife that severs the cord of life.

It was her home, this temple of the dead, this sanctuary of the lonely moors that sheltered her and Joconda.

It was her home, and stood in the stead to her of all those ties and defences which surround the lives of other female creatures. Here she had been safe; her only visitants the timid hare, the friendly goat, the winter-burrowing lizard, and the night-birds that love gloom and silence.

Now all that sweet calm sense of security was gone for ever. Strangers any day might come and disturb her and the dead in their tacit amity, and drive her, as they would drive the scops from his hole in a tree, or a fox from the refuge of the tombs. She knew nowhere else to go in all the world; she had no other home, no other friends.