t out her hand, and touched Fay's rough head with a
tenderness that seemed new even to Fay, to whom she had been always
tender.

"You have suffered more than Michael," she said. "I have endured certain
things in my life, but I could never have endured as you have done the
loss of my peace of mind. How have you lived through these two years?
What days and nights upon the rack it must have meant!"

Oh! the relief of those words. Fay leaned her head against her sister's
knee, and poured forth the endless story of her agony. She had someone
to confide in at last, and the person she loved best, at least whom she
loved a little. She who had never borne a mosquito bite in silence, but
had always shewn it to the first person she met, after rubbing it to a
more prominent red, with a plaintive appeal for sympathy, was now able
to tell her sister everything.

The recital took hours. A few minutes had been enough on the subject of
the duke and Michael, but when Fay came to dilate on her own sufferings,
when the autobiographical flood-gates were opened, it seemed as if the
rush of confidences would never cease. Magdalen listened hour by hour.
Is it given even to the wisest of us ever to speak a true word about
ourselves? Do our whispered or published autobiographies ever deceive
anyone except ourselves? We alone seem unable to read between the lines
of our self-revelations. We alone seem unable to perceive that sinister
ghost-like figure of ourselves which we have unconsciously conjured up
from our pages for all to see; the cruelly faithful reflection of one
whom we have never known. Those who love us and have kept so tenderly
for years the secret of our egotism or our false humility or our
meanness, how can they endure to hear us unconsciously proclaim to the
world what only Love may safely know concerning us?

Magdalen heard, till her heart ached to hear them, all the endless
bolstered-up reasons why Fay was not responsible for Michael's fate. She
heard all about the real murderer not confessing. She heard much that
Fay would have died rather than admit. Gradually she realised that it
was misery that had driven Fay to a partial confession, not as yet
repentance, not the desire to save Michael. Misery starves us out of our
prisons sometimes, tortures us into opening the doors of our cells
bolted from within, but as a rule we make a long weary business of
leaving our cells when only misery urges us forth. I think that
Magdalen's