Was it the last effort of self-preservation ?--the last protest of the living thing against its own annihilation?
He was not to be hers--but this treachery, this wrong should be prevented.
She thought of Lucy in Manisty's arms--of that fresh young life against his breast--and the thought maddened her.

She was conscious of a certain terror of herself--of this fury in the veins, so strange, so alien, so debasing.
But it did not affect her will.
Was Lucy's own heart touched?
Over that question Eleanor had been racking herself for days past.

But if so it could be only a passing fancy.

It made it only the more a duty to protect her from Manisty.

Manisty--the soul of caprice and wilfulness--could never make a woman like Lucy happy.