d and muttered
something. Almost she thought it was her own name.

Still she sat beside him, her body aching, her heart cold; and
watched him, hour after hour.

CHAPTER VII.

"And my brothers visit her?"

Twilight with invisible veils closed around Epworth, its parsonage,
and the high-walled garden where Molly, staff in hand, limped to and
fro beside Johnny Whitelamb--promoted now to be the Reverend John
Whitelamb, B.A. He had arrived that afternoon, having walked all the
way from Oxford.

--"Whenever they visit London," he answered.

"Charles, you know, upheld her from the first; and John has come to
admit that her sufferings have lifted her above man's judgment.
They talk with her as with their equal in wit--"

"Why, and so she is!"

"No doubt: but it does not follow that John would acknowledge it.
They report their Oxford doings to her, and their plans: and she
listens eagerly and advises. To me the strange thing is, as she
manages it, that her interest does not tie her down to sharing their
opinions. She speaks always as a looker-on, and they recognise this.
She keeps her own mind, just as she has always held to her own view
of her marriage. I have never heard her complain, and to her husband
she is an angel: yet I am sure (without being able to tell you why)
that her heart condemns your father and will always condemn him."

"She knows what her punishment has been: we can only guess. Does the
man drink still?"

"Yes; he drinks: but she is no longer anxious about him. Your Uncle
Matthew told me that in his first attacks he used to be no better
than a madman. Something happened: nobody seems to know precisely
what it was, except that he fell and injured his head. Now the
craving for drink remains, but he soaks harmlessly. No doubt he will
kill himself in time; meanwhile even at his worst he is tractable,
and obeys Hetty like a child. To do the man justice, he was always
fond of her."

"Poor Hetty!"

"John has spoken to her once or twice about her soul, I believe: but
he does not persist."

"H'm," said Molly, "you had better say that he is biding his time.
John always persists."

"That's true," he owned with a laugh: "but I have never known him so
baffled to all appearance. The fact is, she cannot be roused to any
interest in herself. Of others she never ceases to think. It was
she, for instance--when I could not afford to buy myself a gown for
ordination--who started the notion