Hesper was not one her world would have counted weak; she had physical courage enough; she rode well, and without fear; she sat calm in the dentist's chair; she would have fought with knife and pistol against violence to the death; and yet, rather than encounter the brutality of an evil-begotten race concentrated in her father, she would yield herself to a defilement eternally more defiling than that she would both kill and die to escape.
"Give me a few hours first, mamma," she begged.

"Don't let him come to me just yet.

For all your hardness, you feel a little for me--don't you ?" "Duty is always hard, my child," said Lady Margaret.

She entirely believed it, and looked on herself as a martyr, a pattern of self-devotion and womanly virtue.

But, had she been certain of escaping discovery, she would have slipped the koh-i-noor into her belt-pouch, notwithstanding.