“Words are interchangeable,” he said:  “that means one thing to one of us which to another has a totally different signification.”  There was something so like his old self in this, that she laughed with an irresistible sense of amusement.

“You were always fond of the oracular,” she said.  She was conscious that on former occasions, if he made such a speech to her, though she would have felt the same amusement, she would not have expressed it so frankly.  But he did not take it at all amiss.  And her thoughts went on in other directions.  She felt herself saying over to herself the words of the old north-country dirge, which came to her recollection she knew not how—­

If hosen and shoon thou gavest nane,
The whins shall prick thee intil the bane.

When she saw that her companion heard her, she asked, “Is that true?”

He shook his head a little.  “It is too matter of fact,” he said, “as I need hardly tell you.  Hosen and shoon are good, but they do not always sufficiently indicate the state of the heart.”

Lady Mary had a consciousness, which was pleasant to her, that so far as the hosen and shoon went, she had abundant means of preparing herself for the pricks of any road, however rough; but she had no time to indulge this pleasing reflection, for she was shortly introduced into a great building, full of innumerable rooms, in one of which her companion left her.

IV.

The door opened, and she felt herself free to come out.  How long she had been there, or what passed there, is not for any one to say.  She came out tingling and smarting—­if such words can be used—­with an intolerable recollection of the last act of her life.  So intolerable was it that all that had gone before, and all the risings up of old errors and visions long dead, were forgotten in the sharp and keen prick of this, which was not over and done like the rest.  No one had accused her, or brought before her judge the things that were against her.  She it was who had done it all,—­she, whose memory did not spare her one fault, who remembered everything.  But when she came to that last frivolity of her old age, and saw for the first time how she had played with the future of the child whom she had brought up, and abandoned to the hardest fate,—­for nothing, for folly, for a jest,—­the horror and bitterness of the thought filled her mind to overflowing.  In the first anguish of that recollection she had to go forth, receiving no word of comfort in respect to it, meeting only with a look of sadness and compassion, which went to her very heart.  She came forth as if she had been driven away, but not by any outward influence, by the force of her own miserable sensations.  “I will write,” she said to herself, “and tell them; I will go—­” And then she stopped short, remembering that she could neither go nor write,—­that all communication with the world she had left was closed.  Was it all closed?  Was there no way in which a message could reach those who remained behind?  She caught the first passer-by whom she passed, and addressed him piteously.  “Oh, tell me,—­you have been longer here than I,—­cannot one send a letter, a message, if it were only a single word?”