Page:The traitor; a story of the fall of the invisible empire (IA traitorstoryoffa00dixo).pdf/265

 my senses at the size of the task I've undertaken—that's what's the matter—I, who have boasted of my strength and shouted my triumph over a strong man's conquest."

Another tear rolled down her cheek. She brushed it away with an angry stroke.

"Suppose I find too late that I'm in love with him!" she exclaimed, helplessly.

Her horse moved on without her urging or recognising it, so absorbed had she become in the battle raging within her heart.

"What is love?" she mused aloud. "I wonder how it feels to really love?—Love him?—nonsense—I hate the very ground he walks on—the self-centred, proud, bigoted, narrow-minded fanatic! I've sworn to avenge my father's death. I'll do it. Let him come to-night to the judgment hall of his own making. I'll prove myself a woman, and do my country a service when I hand him over to justice."

She touched her horse with the whip, and he bounded forward in a swift gallop, and in a few minutes she passed into the old lawn and saw the flash of the white ghost-like columns among the dark firs.

Again she found herself recalling the silly extravagances of his talk as they entered the grounds two days before.