She knew that something
dreadful would happen if she continued to see Joyselle, and the fact
that he was quite innocent, and unsuspecting of the threatened danger,
gave her the sensation of one who sees a child playing with a poisonous
snake. _He_ was in danger as well as she, and not only they two, but his
son and his wife. Her beauty was so great, and she was so accustomed to
see its effect on men, that there was no vanity at all in her suddenly
awakened solicitude for him. At any moment he might see her with the
eyes of a man, instead of, as he had hitherto done, with those of a
father.
"And if he fell in love with _me_," she told herself as the maid clasped
her pearls round her neck, "there would be no hope for any of us."
It is remarkable that the possibility of Joyselle's loving her only
added to her misery, for most women in like cases would have clutched at
the bare chance of such a contingency in rapturous disregard of all
consequences.
She, however, who had been the object of more strong passions than many
women ever even hear of, knew although, or possibly because, she had
never before cared a jot for any man, that her time had come, and that
for her love must be a perilous thing.
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