ntly. At times even Cicely must
have forgotten what lay behind and before her, for she had laughed and
talked with a sort of feverish gaiety; only after such outbursts she had
grown suddenly silent and trembled on the verge of tears. Walter had
watched her and sent her upstairs before ten o'clock, and her mother had
gone up with her and helped her to undress as if she had been a child
again. Then she had put on her dressing-gown and gone to Mrs. Clinton's
room, and resting her head on her mother's knee had told her everything
with frequent tears and many exclamations at her own madness and folly.

It was more difficult to tell even than she had thought. When all was
said about her discontent and the suddenness with which she had been
urged towards a way of escape from surroundings that now seemed
inexpressibly dear to her, there remained that inexcusable fault of
leaving her mother without a word, for a man whom she couldn't even
plead that she loved. With her mother's hand caressing her hair it
seemed to her incredible that she could have done such a thing. She
begged her forgiveness again and again, but each time that she received
loving words in answer she felt that it must be impossible that they
could ever be to one another again what they had been.

At last Mrs. Clinton said, "You must not think too much of that, my
darling. You were carried away; you hardly knew what you were doing. It
is all wiped out in my mind by your wanting me directly you came to
yourself. We won't talk of it any more. But what we ought to talk of,
Cicely dear, and try to see our way through, is the state of mind you
had got into, which made what happened to you possible, and gave this
man his opportunity. I think that six months ago, although he might have
tried to behave in the same way, you would only have been frightened;
you would have come straight to me and told me."

"Oh yes, I should, mother," she cried.

"Then what was it that has come between us? You have told me that you
were discontented at home, but couldn't you have told me that before?"

Cicely was silent. Why hadn't she told her mother, to whom she had been
used to tell everything, of her discontent? A sudden blush ran down from
her cheeks to her neck. It was because she had judged her mother, as
well as her father and brothers, her mother who had accepted the life
that she had kicked against and had bent a meek head to the whims of her
master. She couldn't tell her tha