pay for everything. I
shall try to keep on with the singing.'

It was perhaps wiser to yield every point for the present.

'It shall be as you wish, Thyrza,' Mrs. Ormonde replied.

After a pause:

'Mrs. Emerson will wonder where I am. Will you write to her, so that I
needn't explain when I get back to-morrow?'

'I have just had an anxious letter from her, and I have already
answered it.'

Thyrza withdrew her hand gently.

'I was wrong when I spoke in that way to you yesterday, Mrs. Ormonde,'
she said, meeting the other's eyes. 'You haven't done me harm
intentionally; I know that now. But if you had let him come to me, I
don't think he would have been sorry--afterwards--when he knew I loved
him. I don't think any one will love him more. I was very different two
years ago, and he thinks of me as I was then. Perhaps, if he had seen
me now, and spoken to me--I know I am still without education, and I am
not a lady, but I could have worked very hard, so that he shouldn't be
ashamed of me.'

Mrs. Ormonde turned her face away and sobbed.

'I won't speak of it again,' Thyrza said. 'You couldn't help it. And he
didn't really wish to come, so it was better. I am very sorry for what
I said to you, Mrs. Ormonde.'

But the other could not bear it. She kissed Thyrza's hands, her tears
falling upon them, and went away.

CHAPTER XXXIX

HER RETURN

It was a rainy autumn, and to Thyrza the rain was welcome. A dark,
weeping sky helped her to forget that there was joy somewhere in the
world, that there were some whom golden evenings of the declining year
called forth to wander together and to look in each other's faces with
the sadness born of too much bliss. When a beam of sunlight on the wall
of her chamber greeted her as she awoke, she turned her face upon the
pillow and wished that night were eternal. If she looked out upon the
flaming heights and hollows of a sunset between rain and rain, it
seemed strange that such a scene had ever been to her the symbol of
hope; it was cold now and very distant; what were the splendours of
heaven to a heart that perished for lack of earth's kindly dew?

To the eyes of those who observed her, she was altered indeed, but not
more so than would be accounted for by troubles of health, consequent
upon a sort of fever--they said--which had come upon her in the hot
summer days. In spite of her desire this weakness had obliged her to
give up her singing-practice for the present;