It was with something
akin to a bodily pang that I heard this fragile girl, so easily
subdued by such rebuke or menace as her companions would scarcely have
affected to fear, now pleading for punishment such as would have
quelled the pride and courage of the most high-spirited of her sex. I
felt the deepest pity, not so much for the fear with which she still
trembled as for the agony of terror she must have previously endured.
Eveena averted from her abject supplications a face in which I read
much pain, but more of what would have been disgust in a less
intensely sympathetic nature. And ere long I saw or felt in Eive's
manner that which caused me suddenly to dismiss Eveena from the room,
as from a presence unfit for her spotless purity and exquisite
delicacy. Finding in me no sign of passionate anger, no readiness, but
reluctance to visit treason with physical pain, Eive's own expression
changed. Unable to conceive the feeling that rendered the course she
had at first expected simply impossible to me, a nature I had utterly
misconceived caught at an idea few women, not experienced in the worst
of life's lessons, would have entertained.
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