Page:The Fate of Fenella (1892).djvu/121

 yet he did not shrink from sacrificing his own feelings in order to serve her, whom, in spite of everything, he still loved and admired more than any woman on earth.

"I have treated you very badly," she said to him once on the train; "I led you on and flirted with you, and made you fall in love with me, and all for nothing but the pleasure of making an empty conquest! I played with your heart as I have done with that of dozens of others; but I think you will allow that I have been punished for it!"

He could not answer her. The punishment her own folly had brought upon her was indeed terrible. And yet he did not know one-half of the burden she had to bear; nor did he guess at her hopeless and helpless love for the husband for whose crime she was suffering, that seemed to have sprung up into new life in her heart during these last three weeks of peril and of well-nigh despair.

Where was he for whom she had suffered so much, for whose sin her own life had been in jeopardy? This was the question she asked of herself, wildly and despairingly, as she leant over the bulwarks of the steamer, and watched the green waves, as they hurried by and dashed themselves into foam against the side of the vessel.

Who that had known the wild, reckless girl of