She had forgotten her
danger--the all but inevitable scandal--until Raoul brought it back
to her, and in the same breath saved her by his heroic lie. She could
not profit by it, though. Her lips parted to refute it, and for the
first time she gazed up at him, her eyes brimming with sudden love,
gratitude, pride, even while they entreated against the sacrifice. He
was smiling down with an air of faint amusement; yet beneath the lashes
she read a command which mastered her will, imposed silence. He had
taken on a new manliness, and for the first time in the story of their
loves she felt herself dominated by something stronger than passion. He
had swept her off her feet, before now, by boyish ardour: her humility,
the marvel of being loved, had aided him; but hitherto in her heart she
had always felt her own character to be the stronger. Now he challenged
her on woman's own ground--that of self-abnegation; he commanded her
to his own hurt, he towered above her. She had never dreamed of a love
like this. Beaten, despairing for him, yet proud as she had never been
in her life, she held her breath.
Corporal Zeally was merely bewildered. His was a deliberate mind and
had hatched out the night's catastrophe after incubating it for weeks.
Unconvinced by Polly's explanation of her meeting with M. Raoul at the
Nursery gate, he had nursed a dull jealousy and set himself to watch,
and had dogged his man down at length with the slow cunning of a yokel
bred of a line of poachers.
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