It had been to her what its sting is to the bee--a thing which if once used in self-defence is self-destructive.

Not, indeed, that she had used it as her sting; it had been forced from her by the machinations of Trenchard; but used it had been, and was done with; she had it no longer that with it she might hold him in defiance, and it did not occur to her that he was no longer in case to invoke the law.
Her face grew stony, a dry glitter came to her blue eyes; she cast a glance over her shoulder at Diana and her servant.

Wilding observed it and read what was passing in her mind; indeed, it was not to be mistaken, no more than what is passing in the mind of the recruit who looks behind him in the act of charging.

His lips half smiled.
"Of what are you afraid ?" he asked her.
"I am not afraid," she answered in husky accents that belied her.
Perhaps to reassure her, perhaps because he thought of his companions lurking in the thicket and cared not to have them for his audience, he suggested they should go a little way in the direction her cousin had taken.

She wheeled her horse, and, side by side, they ambled up the dusty road.
"The thing I have to tell you," said he presently, "concerns myself." "Does it concern me ?" she asked him coldly, and her coolness was urged partly by her newborn fears, partly to counterbalance such impression as her illjudged show of gladness at his safety might have made upon his mind.