e
face and soft voice! He thought of all this, and of his own love and
friendship for her,--of Edith's love for her! He thought of it all,
and he could not believe that she was guilty. There was some other
fault, some much lesser fault than that, with which she charged
herself. But there she lay at his feet, and it was necessary that he
should do something towards lifting her to a seat.

He stooped and took her by the hand, but his feeble strength was not
sufficient to raise her. "Lady Mason," he said, "speak to me. I do
not understand you. Will you not let me seat you on the sofa?"

But she, at least, had realised the full force of the revelation she
had made, and lay there covered with shame, broken-hearted, and
unable to raise her eyes from the ground. With what inward struggles
she had played her part during the last few months, no one might ever
know! But those struggles had been kept to herself. The world, her
world, that world for which she had cared, in which she had lived,
had treated her with honour and respect, and had looked upon her as
an ill-used innocent woman. But now all that would be over. Every one
now must know what she was. And then, as she lay there, that thought
came to her. Must every one know it? Was there no longer any hope
for her? Must Lucius be told? She could bear all the rest, if only
he might be ignorant of his mother's disgrace;--he, for whom all
had been done! But no. He, and every one must know it. Oh! if the
beneficent Spirit that sees all and pities all would but take her
that moment from the world!

When Sir Peregrine asked her whether he should seat her on the sofa,
she slowly picked herself up, and with her head still crouching
towards the ground, placed herself where she before had been sitting.
He had been afraid that she would have fainted, but she was not one
of those women whose nature easily admits of such relief as that.
Though she was always pale in colour and frail looking, there was
within her a great power of self-sustenance. She was a woman who with
a good cause might have dared anything. With the worst cause that a
woman could well have, she had dared and endured very much. She did
not faint, nor gasp as though she were choking, nor become hysteric
in her agony; but she lay there, huddled up in the corner of the
sofa, with her face hidden, and all those feminine graces forgotten
which had long stood her in truth so royally. The inner, true, living
woman was there