e. All I have to do is to die,
and then whatever comes will come. Poor Zillah does her best to
persuade me that she _does_ know. I shall try to seem as if I believed
her. Why should I give her pain? What does it matter if she is wrong?
She is a kind sister to me, and I shall pretend that I believe her.
Perhaps she is right? She may be, mayn't she?"

"She may be."

"It's good of you to come and sit here while she rests. She hasn't gone
to bed for two nights. She's the only one of us that cares for me.
Barbara has got her husband; well, I'm glad of that. And there's no
knowing; she might live to be Lady Musselwhite. Sir Roland hasn't any
children. Doesn't it make you laugh?"

She herself tried to laugh--a ghostly sound. It seemed to exhaust her.
For half an hour no word was spoken. Then Cecily, who had fallen into
brooding, heard herself called by a strange name.

"Miss Doran!"

She rose and bent over the bed, startled by this summons from the dead
past.

"Can I do anything for you, Madeline?"

The heavy eyes looked at her in a perplexed way. They seemed to be just
awaking, and Madeline smiled faintly.

"Didn't I call you, Miss Doran? I was thinking about you, and got
confused. But you are married, of course. What is your name now? I
can't remember."

"Mrs. Elgar."

"How silly of me! Mrs. Elgar, of course. Are you happily married?"

"Why do you ask?"

For the first time, she remembered the possibility that the Denyers
knew of her disgrace. But Madeline's reply seemed to prove that she, at
all events, had no such thing in mind.

"I was only trying to remember whom you married. Yes, yes; you told us
about it before. Or else. Mrs. Travis told me."

"What did she say?"

"Only that you had married for love, as every woman ought to. But _she_
is very unhappy. Perhaps that would have been my own lot if I had
lived. I dare say I should have been married long ago. What does it
matter? But as long as one is born at all, one might as well live life
through, see the best as well as the worst of it. It's been all worst
with me.--Oh, that's coming again! That wishing and rebelling and
despairing! I thought it was all over. You stand there and look at me;
that is you and this is I, this, this! I am lying here waiting for
death and burial. You have the husband you love, and long years of
happy life before you.--Do you feel sorry for me? Suppose it was you
who lay here?"

The same question she had put to Mrs. Travis