Can change to loath'd deformity; your wealth
The prey of thieves."
—Massinger.
The most open-handed hospitality having ever been the rule at Roselands, it was no difficult matter for Count De Lisle to get himself invited to stay to tea and spend the evening; in fact it was long past midnight when he at last took leave of Juliet and went away.
The thud of his horse's hoofs as he galloped down the avenue, brought a pale, haggard face to an upper window; but the dim light of the stars revealed nothing save the merest outline of the steed and his rider, and that for but an instant.
The watcher turned away, sighing to herself "I cannot see him, but it must be he," hastily crossed the room and stole noiselessly into the hall beyond.
The hours spent by him in dalliance with Juliet (they had had the drawing-room to themselves since ten o'clock) had been to her—his much tried sister—a time of bitter anguish and fierce mental conflict.
How could she permit this wickedness? yet how prevent it, when the only way to do so was by exposing him—her brother?
It seemed a terribly hard thing to do, for she loved him, and his disgrace was hers, and that of the whole family.
She was sorely tempted to leave Juliet to the fate she seemed to be drawing upon herself by her egregious folly,—that of becoming the wife of a spendthrift, and one whose vices had led him to commit a crime against the laws of the land, the penalty of which was a term of years in the penitentiary.