ed Laura. 'I have betrayed him!' she answered
herself in a tone of despair, as she hid her face in her hands;
'betrayed him when he is dying!'

Her mother was too much shocked to speak in the soft reluctant manner in
which she was wont to reprove.

'Laura,' said she, 'I must understand this. What has passed between you
and Philip?'

Laura only replied by a flood of tears, ungovernable from the exhaustion
of sleeplessness and want of food. Mrs. Edmonstone's kindness returned;
she soothed her, begged her to control herself, and at length brought
her into the house, and up to the dressing-room, where she sank on the
sofa, weeping violently. It was the reaction of the long restraint
she had been exercising on herself, and the silence she had
been maintaining. She was not feeling the humiliation, her own
acknowledgement of disobedience, but of the horror of being forced to
reveal the secret he had left in her charge.

Long did she weep, breaking out more piteously at each attempt of her
mother to lead her to explain. Poor Mrs. Edmonstone was alarmed and
perplexed beyond measure; this half confession had so overthrown all her
ideas that she was ready to apprehend everything most improbable, and
almost expected to hear of a private marriage. Her presence seemed only
to make Laura worse, and at length she said,--'I shall leave you
for half an hour, in hopes that by that time you may have recovered
yourself, and be able to give the explanation which I _require_.'

She went into her own room, and waited, with her eyes on her watch, a
prey to every strange alarm and anticipation, grievously hurt at this
want of confidence, and wounded, where she least expected it, by both
daughter and nephew. She thought, guessed, recollected, wondered,
tormented herself, and at the last of the thirty minutes, hastily opened
the door into the dressing-room. Laura sat as before, crouched up in the
corner of the wide sofa; and when she raised her face, at her mother's
entrance, it was bewildered rather than embarrassed.

'Well, Laura?' She waited unanswered; and the wretchedness of the look
so touched her, that, kissing her, she said, 'Surely, my dear, you need
not be afraid to tell me anything?'

Laura did not respond to the kindness, but asked, looking perplexed,
'What have I said? Have I told it?'

'What you have given me reason to believe,' said Mrs. Edmonstone, trying
to bring herself to speak it explicitly, 'that you think Philip is