creeping back
to beg your mother's pardon after you have insulted her. You little
dowdy, half-grown creature! I was handsomer than ever you will be when
I married your father. I would have gone through fire and water to serve
your father! If he had asked me to cut off one of my arms, I would have
done it--I would have done it to please him!" She turned suddenly with
her face to the wall, forgetting her daughter, forgetting her husband,
forgetting everything but the torturing remembrance of her lost beauty.
"My arms!" she repeated to herself, faintly. "What arms I had when I was
young!" She snatched up the sleeve of her dressing-gown furtively, with
a shudder. "Oh, look at it now! look at it now!"

Neelie fell on her knees at the bedside and hid her face. In sheer
despair of finding comfort and help anywhere else, she had cast herself
impulsively on her mother's mercy; and this was how it had ended! "Oh,
mamma," she pleaded, "you know I didn't mean to offend you! I couldn't
help it when you spoke so of my father. Oh, do, do forgive me!"

Mrs. Milroy turned again on her pillow, and looked at her daughter
vacantly. "Forgive you?" she repeated, with her mind still in the past,
groping its way back darkly to the present.

"I beg your pardon, mamma--I beg your pardon on my knees. I am so
unhappy; I do so want a little kindness! Won't you forgive me?"

"Wait a little," rejoined Mrs. Milroy. "Ah," she said, after an
interval, "now I know! Forgive you? Yes; I'll forgive you on one
condition." She lifted Neelie's head, and looked her searchingly in the
face. "Tell me why you hate Miss Gwilt! You've a reason of your own for
hating her, and you haven't confessed it yet."

Neelie's head dropped again. The burning color that she was hiding by
hiding her face showed itself on her neck. Her mother saw it, and gave
her time.

"Tell me," reiterated Mrs. Milroy, more gently, "why do you hate her?"

The answer came reluctantly, a word at a time, in fragments.

"Because she is trying--"

"Trying what?"

"Trying to make somebody who is much--"

"Much what?"

"Much too young for her--"

"Marry her?"

"Yes, mamma."

Breathlessly interested, Mrs. Milroy leaned forward, and twined her hand
caressingly in her daughter's hair.

"Who is it, Neelie?" she asked, in a whisper.

"You will never say I told you, mamma?"

"Never! Who is it?"

"Mr. Armadale."

Mrs. Milroy leaned back on her pillow in dead silence. The plain
bet