which
she had discovered him. There seemed to be little likelihood of Christian's
learning from any other person that she had met with Peak at Budleigh Salterton;
he had, indeed, dined with her at the Walworths', and might improve his
acquaintance with that family, but it was improbable that they would ever
mention in his hearing the stranger who had casually been presented to them, or
indeed ever again think of him. If she held her peace, the secret of Godwin's
retirement must still remain impenetrable. He would pursue his ends as hitherto,
thinking of her, if at all, as a weak woman who had immodestly betrayed a
hopeless passion, and who could be trusted never to wish him harm.
    That was Marcella's way of reading a man's thoughts. She did not attribute
to Peak the penetration which would make him uneasy. In spite of masculine
proverbs, it is the habit of women to suppose that the other sex regards them
confidingly, ingenuously. Marcella was unusually endowed with analytic
intelligence, but in this case she believed what she hoped. She knew that Peak's
confidence in her must be coloured with contempt, but this mattered little so
long as he paid her the compliment of feeling sure that she was superior to
ignoble temptations. Many a woman would behave with treacherous malice. It was
in her power to expose him, to confound all his schemes, for she knew the
authorship of that remarkable paper in The Critical Review. Before receiving
Peak's injunction of secrecy, Earwaker had talked of The New Sophistry with
Moxey and with Malkin; the request came too late. In her interview with Godwin
at the Exeter hotel, she had not even hinted at this knowledge, partly because
she was unconscious that Peak imagined the affair a secret between himself and
Earwaker, partly because she thought it unworthy of her even to seem to
threaten. It gratified her, however, to feel that he was at her mercy, and the
thought preoccupied her for many days.
    Passion which has the intellect on its side is more easily endured than that
which offers sensual defiance to all reasoning, but on the other hand it lasts
much longer. Marcella was not consumed by her emotions; she often thought
calmly, coldly, of the man she loved. Yet he was seldom long out of her mind,
and the instigation of circumstances at times made her suffering intense. Such
an occasion was her first meeting with Sidwell Warricombe, which took place at
the Walworths', in London. Down in Devonshire she had learnt that a family named
Warricombe were Peak's