"Yes." Johanna coloured, hesitated as he had never known her to do,
then burst out: "And now there is nothing in the way of it." She drew
her thumb across the leaf-corners of a book that was lying on the
table. "Oh, I know what you will say: how, now that Ephie has turned
out to be weak and untrustworthy, there is all the more reason for me
to remain with her, to look after her. But that is not possible." She
faced him sharply, as though he had contradicted her. "I am incapable
of pretending to be the same when my feelings have changed; and, as I
told you--as I knew that night--I shall never be able to feel for Ephie
as I did before. I am ready, as I said, to take all the blame for what
has happened; I was blind and careless. But if the care and affection
of years count for nothing; if I have been so little able to win her
confidence; if, indeed, I have only succeeded in making her dislike me,
by my care of her, so that when she is in trouble, she turns from me,
instead of to me--why, then I have failed lamentably in what I had made
the chief duty of my life."

"Besides," she continued more quietly, "there is another reason: Ephie
is going to fall a victim to her nerves. I see that; and my poor,
foolish mother is doing her best to foster it.--You smile? Only because
you do not understand what it means. It is no laughing matter. If an
American woman once becomes conscious of her nerves, then Heaven help
her!--Now I am not of a disinterested enough nature to devote myself to
sick-nursing where there is no real sickness. And then, too, my mother
intends taking a French maid back with her, and a person of that class
will perform such duties much more competently than I."

She spoke with bitterness. Maurice mumbled some words of sympathy,
wondering why she should choose to say these things to him.

"Even at home my place is filled," continued Johanna. "The housekeeper
who was appointed during our absence has been found so satisfactory
that she will continue in the post after our return. Everywhere, you
see, I have proved superfluous. There, as here."

"I'm sure you're mistaken," said Maurice with more warmth. "And, Miss
Joan, there's something I should like to say, if I may. Don't you think
you take what has happened here a little too seriously? No doubt Ephie
behaved foolishly. But was it after all any more than a girlish
escapade?"

"Too seriously?"

Johanna turned her shortsighted eyes on the young man, and gaze