housand times yes, I would
rather die than bear this. What do I care for life--it has cheated me!
I meant well, and I tried to do well, and I was true to him in word and
deed even when I suffered most, even when--"

The Duchess laid a cheek against the burning head. "I understand, my own
dear. I understand--altogether."

"But you cannot know," the broken girl replied; "but through everything
I was true; and I have been tempted too when my heart was aching so,
when the days were so empty, the nights so long, and my heart hurt--hurt
me. But now, it is over, everything is done. You will keep me here--ah,
say you will keep me here till everything can be settled, and I can go
away--far away--far--!"

She stopped with a gasping cry, and her eyes suddenly strained into the
distance, as though a vision of some mysterious thing hung before her.
The Duchess realised that that temptation, which has come to so many
disillusioned mortals, to end it all, to find quiet somehow, somewhere
out in the dark, was upon her. She became resourceful and persuasively
commanding.

"But no, my darling," she said, "you are going nowhere. Here in London
is your place now. And you must not stay here in my house. You must go
back to your home. Your place is there. For the present, at any rate,
there must be no scandal. Suspicion is nothing, talk is nothing, and the
world forgets--"

"Oh, I do not care for the world or its forgetting!" the wounded girl
replied. "What is the world to me! I wanted my own world, the world
of my four walls, quiet and happy, and free from scandal and shame. I
wanted love and peace there, and now...!"

"You must be guided by those who love you. You are too young to decide
what is best for yourself. You must let Windlehurst and me think for
you; and, oh, my darling, you cannot know how much I care for your best
good!"

"I cannot, will not, bear the humiliation and the shame. This letter
here--you see!"

"It is the letter of a woman who has had more affaires than any man in
London. She is preternaturally clever, my dear--Windlehurst would tell
you so. The brilliant and unscrupulous, the beautiful and the bad, have
a great advantage in this world. Eglington was curious, that is all. It
is in the breed of the Eglingtons to go exploring, to experiment."

Hylda started. Words from the letter Sybil Lady Eglington had left
behind her rushed into her mind: "Experiment, subterfuge, secrecy.
'Reaping where you had not sowe