You were a mere child, and Hugh
neglected you shamefully."

"I was not a mere child," said Amabel. "I was a sinful woman."

Lady Elliston sat still, as if arrested and spell-bound by the
unexpected words. She seemed to find no answer. And as the silence grew
long, Amabel went on, slowly, with difficulty, yet determinedly opposing
and exposing the folly of the implied accusation. "You don't seem to
remember the facts. I betrayed my husband. He might have cast me off. He
might have disgraced me and my child. And he lifted me up; he sheltered
me; he gave his name to the child. He has given me everything I have.
You see--you must not speak of him like that to me."

Lady Elliston had gathered herself together though still, it was
evident, bewildered. "I don't mean to blame Hugh so much. It was your
fault, too, I suppose. You asked for the cloister, I know."

"No; I didn't ask for it. I asked to be allowed to go away and hide
myself. The cloister, too, was a gift,--like my name, my undishonoured
child."

"Dear, dear Amabel," said Lady Elliston, gazing at her, "how beautiful
of you to be able to feel like that."

"It isn't I who am beautiful"; Amabel's lips trembled a little now and
her eyes filled suddenly with tears. Tears and trembling seemed to bring
hardness rather than softening to her face; they were like a chill
breeze, like an icy veil, and the face, with its sorrow, was like a
winter's landscape.

"He is so beautiful that he would never let anyone know or understand
what I owe him: he would never know it himself: there is something
simple and innocent about such men: they do beautiful things
unconsciously. You know him well: you are far nearer him than I am: but
you can't know what the beauty is, for you have never been helpless and
disgraced and desperate nor needed anyone to lift you up. No one can
know as I do the angel in my husband."

Lady Elliston sat silent. She received Amabel's statements steadily yet
with a little wincing, as though they had been bullets whistling past
her head; they would not pierce, if one did not move; yet an involuntary
compression of the lips and flutter of the eyelids revealed a rather
rigid self-mastery. Only after the silence had grown long did she
slightly stir, move her hand, turn her head with a deep, careful breath,
and then say, almost timidly; "Then, he has lifted you up, Amabel?--You
are happy, really happy, in your strange life?"

Amabel looked down. The force of