ied respectably--not by the parish. And I told him I would always
look after the little girls."

The rector sighed. He moved away. Then unexpectedly he came back again.

"I must say it to you," he said firmly, but still so low as not to be
heard by any one else in the cottage. "You are taking a great
responsibility here to-night. Let me implore you not to fill that poor
woman with thoughts of bitterness and revenge at such a moment of her
life. That _you_ feel bitterly, I know. Mary has explained to me--but
ask yourself, I beg of you!--how is _she_ to be helped through her
misery, either now or in the future, except by patience and submission
to the will of God?"

He had never made so long a speech to this formidable parishioner of
his, and his young cheek glowed with the effort.

"You must leave me to do what I think best," said Marcella, coldly. She
felt herself wholly set free from that sort of moral compulsion which
his holiness of mind and character had once exerted upon her. That
hateful opinion of his, which Mary had reported, had broken the spell
once for all.

Mary did not venture to kiss her friend. They all went. Ann Mulling, who
was dropping as much with sleep as grief, shuffled off last. When she
was going, Mrs. Hurd seemed to rouse a little, and held her by the
skirt, saying incoherent things.

"Dear Mrs. Hurd," said Marcella, kneeling down beside her, "won't you
let Ann go? I am going to spend the night here, and take care of you and
Willie."

Mrs. Hurd gave a painful start.

"You're very good, miss," she said half-consciously, "very good, I'm
sure. But she's his own flesh and blood is Ann--his own flesh and blood.
Ann!"

The two women clung together, the rough, ill-tempered sister-in-law
muttering what soothing she could think of. When she was gone, Minta
Hurd turned her face to the back of the settle and moaned, her hands
clenched under her breast.

Marcella went about her preparations for the night. "She is extremely
weak," Dr. Clarke had said; "the heart in such a state she may die of
syncope on very small provocation. If she is to spend the night in
crying and exciting herself, it will go hard with her. Get her to sleep
if you possibly can."

And he had left a sleeping draught. Marcella resolved that she would
persuade her to take it. "But I will wake her before eight o'clock," she
thought. "No human being has the right to rob her of herself through
that last hour."

And tenderly she