less she was strangely mistaken, the _denouement_ drew very near.

For all her self-study, her unflinching recognition of physical and
psychical facts which the average woman blinks over, Mary deceived
herself as to the date of that final triumph which permitted her to
observe Rhoda Nunn with perfect equanimity. Her outbreak of angry
feeling on the occasion of Bella Royston's death meant something more
than she would acknowledge before the inquisition of her own mind. It
was just then that she had become aware of Rhoda's changing attitude
towards Everard Barfoot; trifles such as only a woman would detect had
convinced her that Everard's interest in Rhoda was awakening a serious
response; and this discovery, though it could not surprise her, caused
an obscure pang which she attributed to impersonal regret, to mere
natural misgiving. For some days she thought of Rhoda in an ironic,
half-mocking spirit. Then came Bella's suicide, and the conversation in
which Rhoda exhibited a seeming heartlessness, the result, undoubtedly,
of grave emotional disturbance. To her own astonishment, Mary was
overcome with an impulse of wrathful hostility, and spoke words which
she regretted as soon as they had passed her lips.

Poor Bella had very little to do with this moment of discord between
two women who sincerely liked and admired each other. She only offered
the occasion for an outburst of secret feeling which probably could not
have been avoided. Mary Barfoot had loved her cousin Everard; it began
when he was one-and-twenty; she, so much older, had never allowed
Everard or any one else to suspect her passion, which made her for two
or three years more unhappy than she had ever been, or was ever to be
when once her strong reason had prevailed. The scandal of Amy Drake,
happening long after, revived her misery, which now took the form of
truly feminine intolerance; she tried to believe that Everard was
henceforth of less than no account to her, that she detested him for
his vices. Amy Drake, however, she detested much more.

When her friendship with Rhoda Nunn had progressed to intimacy, she
could not refrain from speaking of her cousin Everard, absent at the
ends of the earth, and perchance lost to her sight for ever. Her
mention of him was severe, yet of a severity so obviously blended with
other feeling, that Rhoda could not but surmise the truth. Sentimental
confession never entered Miss Barfoot's mind; she had conquered her
desir