m, caught as it were from Magdalen's presence.

But gradually miserable brooding memories returned, and it seemed at
last as if something in Magdalen's gentle serenity irritated instead of
soothing Fay as heretofore. Was Magdalen a sort of unconscious ally of
that fainting soul within Fay's fortress? Were chance words of
Magdalen's beginning to make the rebel stir in his cell? At any rate
something stirred. Something was making trouble. Fay began to shrink
from Magdalen, involuntarily at first, then purposely for long moody
intervals. Then she would be sarcastic and bitter with her, jibe at the
housekeeping, and criticise the household arrangements. A day later she
would be humbly and hysterically affectionate once more, asking to be
forgiven for her waywardness. She could not live without the comfort of
Magdalen's tenderness. And at times she could not live with it. Magdalen
preserved an unmoved front. She ignored her sister's petulance and
spasmodic fault-finding. She knew they were symptoms of some secret ill,
but what that ill was she did not know. She kept the way open for Fay's
sudden remorseful return to affectionate relations, and waited.

Those who, like Magdalen, do not put any value on themselves, are slow
to take offence. It was not that she did not perceive a slight, or a
rebuff, or a sneer at her expense, but she never, so to speak, picked up
the offence flung at her. She let it lie, by the same instinct that led
her to step aside in a narrow path rather than that her skirt should
touch a dead mole. No one could know Magdalen long without seeing that
she lived by a kind of spiritual instinct, as real to her as the natural
instincts of animals.

Fay became more and more haggard and irritable as the months at
Priesthope drew into a year. A new element of misery was added to her
life by the sight of Wentworth, and his visits were becoming frequent.
His mere presence made acute once more that other memory, partially
blurred, persistently pushed aside--the memory of Michael in prison. The
figure of the duke had temporarily displaced that other figure in its
cell.

But now the remembrance of Michael, continually stirred up by poor
Wentworth, with his set, bereaved face, was never suffered to sleep.
With every week of her life it seemed to Fay some new pain came.

Magdalen could not comfort her. Magdalen, who was so fond of Michael.

_If Magdalen knew!_

_Magdalen must never, never know._ She could not liv