Victor's Triumph / Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend

TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE:
AUTHOR OF TRIED FOR HER LIFE, THE LOST HEIRESS, ALLWORTH ABBEY, ETC., ETC.

Thus he grew Tolerant of what he half disdained. And she, Perceiving that she was but half disdained, Began to break her arts with graver fits— Turn red or pale, and often, when they met, Sigh deeply, or, all-silent, gaze upon him With such a fixed devotion, that the old man, Though doubtful, felt the flattery, and at times Would flatter his own wish, in age, for love, And half believe her true.
—Tennyson.
As soon as the subtle siren was left alone in the drawing-room with the aged clergyman she began weaving her spells around him as successfully as did the beautiful enchantress Vivien around the sage Merlin.
Throwing her bewildering dark eyes up to his face she murmured in hurried tones:
You will not betray me to this family? Oh, consider! I am so young and so helpless!
And so beautiful, added the old man under his breath, as he gazed with involuntary admiration upon her fair, false face. Then, aloud, he said: I have already told you, wretched child, that I would forbear to expose you so long as you should conduct yourself with strict propriety here; but no longer.
You do not trust me. Ah, you do not see that one false step with its terrible consequences has been such an awful and enduring lesson to me that I could not make another! I am safer now from the possibility of error than is the most innocent and carefully guarded child. Oh, can you not understand this? she asked, pathetically.
And her argument was a very specious and plausible one, and it made an impression.