She moved to the door, but Catherine had only just time to catch her, or
she would have fallen over a chair from sudden giddiness.

'Miserable!' she said, dashing a tear from her eyes, 'I must go and lie
down then in the proper missish fashion. Mind, on your peril, Catherine,
not a word to any one but Robert. I shall tell Agnes. And Robert is not
to speak to me! No, don't come--I will go alone.'

And warning her sister back, she groped her way upstairs. Inside her
room, when she had locked the door, she stood a moment upright with the
letter in her hand,--the blotted incoherent scrawl, where Langham had
for once forgotten to be literary, where every pitiable half-finished
sentence pleaded with her--even in the first smart of her wrong--for
pardon, for compassion, as towards something maimed and paralysed from
birth, unworthy even of her contempt. Then the tears began to rain over
her cheeks.

'I was not good enough--I was not good enough--God would not let me!'

And she fell on her knees beside the bed, the little bit of paper
crushed in her hands against her lips. Not good enough for what? _To
save?_

How lightly she had dreamed of healing, redeeming, changing! And the
task is refused her. It is not so much the cry of personal desire that
shakes her as she kneels and weeps, nor is it mere wounded woman's
pride. It is a strange stern sense of law. Had she been other than she
is--more loving, less self-absorbed, loftier in motive--he could not
have loved her so, have left her so. Deep undeveloped forces of
character stir within her. She feels herself judged,--and with a
righteous judgment--issuing inexorably from the facts of life and
circumstance.

* * * * *

Meanwhile Catherine was shut up downstairs with Robert, who had come
over early to see how the household fared.

Robert listened to the whole luckless story with astonishment and
dismay. This particular possibility of mischief had gone out of his mind
for some time. He had been busy in his East End work. Catherine had been
silent. Over how many matters they would once have discussed with open
heart was she silent now?

'I ought to have been warned,' he said with quick decision, 'if you knew
this was going on. I am the only man among you, and I understand Langham
better than the rest of you. I might have looked after the poor child a
little.'

Catherine accepted the reproach mutely as one little smart the more.
However,