sh communication to female
like lightning, or thought itself.

The old lady started, and whispered back--

"It's false! it is a calumny! it is monstrous! look at her face. It is
blasphemy to accuse such a face."

"Tut! tut! tut!" said the other; "you might as well say this is not my
hand. I ought to know; and I tell ye it is so."

Then, much to Margaret Van Eyck's surprise, she went up to the girl, and
taking her round the neck, kissed her warmly.

"I suffered for Gerard, and you shed your blood for him I do hear; his
own words show me that I have been to blame, the very words you have
read to me. Ay, Gerard, my child, I have held aloof from her; but I'll
make it up to her once I begin. You are my daughter from this hour."

Another warm embrace sealed this hasty compact, and the woman of impulse
was gone.

Margaret lay back in her chair, and a feeble smile stole over her face.
Gerard's mother had kissed her and called her daughter; but the next
moment she saw her old friend looking at her with a vexed air.

"I wonder you let that woman kiss you."

"His mother!" murmured Margaret, half reproachfully.

"Mother, or no mother, you would not let her touch you if you knew what
she whispered in my ear about you."

"About me?" said Margaret faintly.

"Ay, about you, whom she never saw till to-night." The old lady was
proceeding, with some hesitation and choice of language, to make
Margaret share her indignation, when an unlooked-for interruption closed
her lips.

The young woman slid from her chair to her knees, and began to pray
piteously to her for pardon. From the words and the manner of her
penitence a bystander would have gathered she had inflicted some cruel
wrong, some intolerable insult, upon her venerable friend.

CHAPTER XLV

The little party at the hosier's house sat at table discussing the
recent event, when their mother returned, and casting a piercing glance
all round the little circle, laid the letter flat on the table. She
repeated every word of it by memory, following the lines with her
finger, to cheat herself and bearers into the notion that she could read
the words, or nearly. Then, suddenly lifting her head, she cast another
keen look on Cornelis and Sybrandt: their eyes fell.

On this the storm that had long been brewing burst on their heads.

Catherine seemed to swell like an angry hen ruffling her feathers, and
out of her mouth came a Rhone and Saone of wisdom and twaddle, of gre