Prepared as she had been for the worst by many an hour of vigil beside her mother's bed, the horror of this precise accusation--and such an accusation--overcame her.

"What ?" she cried.
"You dare to say that I--that I----" She could not finish.
But her eyes lightened, her form dilated with passion; and tipsy, ignorant, brutish as he was, the Spaniard could not be blind to the indignation, the resentment, the very wonder which stopped her breath and choked her utterance.

At the sight some touch of shame, some touch of pity, made itself felt in the dull recesses even of that brain.

"I don't say it," he muttered awkwardly.

"It is what they are saying in the street." "In the street ?" "Ay, where else ?" He knew who said it, for he knew whence his orders came: but he was not going to tell her.