ep my
word. How does it strike you, Eleanor?"

"I am not quite clear how you regard the matter. Are you speaking of
the promise only as a promise?"

It was no use. Miriam could not tell the truth; she could not confess
her position. At once a smile trembled scornfully upon her lips.

"What else could I mean?"

"Then it seems to me that the obligation has passed away with the
circumstances that occasioned it."

Miriam kept her eyes on the table, and for a few moments seemed to
reflect.

"A promise is a promise, Eleanor."

"So it is. And a fact is a fact. I take it for granted that you are no
longer the person who made the promise. I have a faint recollection
that when I was about eight years old, I pledged myself, on reaching
maturity, to give my nurse the exact half of my worldly possessions. I
don't feel the least ashamed of having made such a promise, and just as
little of not having kept it."

Miriam smiled, but still had an unconvinced face.

"I was not eight years old," she said, "but about four-and-twenty."

"Then let us put it in this way. Do you still feel a desire to benefit
that religious community in Bartles? Would it distress you to think
that they shook their heads in mentioning your name?"

"I do feel rather in that way," Miriam admitted slowly.

"But is this enough to justify you in giving them half or more of all
you possess? You spoke of pulling down Redbeck House, and building on
the site, didn't you?"

"Yes."

"In any case, should you ever live there again?"

"Never."

"You prefer to be with us in London?"

"I think you have been troubled with me quite long enough. Perhaps I
might take rooms."

"If you are as willing to share our house as we are to have you with
us, there can be no need for you to live alone."

"I can't make up my mind about that, Eleanor. Let us talk only about
the chapel just now. Are you sure that other people would see it as you
do?"

"Other people of my way of thinking would no doubt think the
same--which is a pretty piece of tautology. Edward would be amazed to
hear that you have such scruples. It isn't as if you had promised to
support a family in dire need, or anything of that kind. The chapel is
a superfluity."

"Not to them."

"They have one already."

"But very small and inconvenient."

"Suppose you ask Mr. Mallard for his thoughts on the subject?" said
Eleanor, as if at the bidding of a caprice.

"Does Mr. Mallard know that I once had th