At last long and agonising prayer brought gentler thoughts, and mere physical exhaustion a calmer mood.  How wicked she had been; how rebellious!  Why not forgive him, as One greater than she had forgiven?  It was ungrateful of him; but was he not human?  Why should she expect his heart to be better than hers?  Besides, he might have excuses for his suspicion.  He might be the best judge, being a man, and such a clever one too.  Yes; it was God’s cross, and she would bear it; she would try and forget him.  No; that was impossible; she must hear of him, if not see him, day by day:  besides, was not her fate linked up with his?  And yet shut out from him by that dark wall of suspicion!  It was very bitter.  But she could pray for him; she would pray for him now.  Yes; it was God’s cross, and she would bear it.  He would right her if He thought fit; and if not, what matter?  Was she not born to sorrow?  Should she complain if another drop, and that the bitterest of all, was added to the cup?

And bear her cross she did, about with her, coming in, and going out, for many a weary day.  There was no change in her habits or demeanour; she was never listless for a moment in her school; she was more gay and amusing than ever, when she gathered her little ones around her for a story:  but still there was the unseen burden, grinding her heart slowly, till she felt as if every footstep was stained with a drop of her heart’s blood....  Why not?  It would be the sooner over.

Then, at times came that strange woman’s pleasure in martyrdom, the secret pride of suffering unjustly:  but even that, after a while, she cast away from her, as a snare, and tried to believe that she deserved all her sorrow—­deserved it, that is, in the real honest sense of the word; that she had worked it out, and earned it, and brought it on herself—­how, she knew not, but longed and strove to know.  No; it was no martyrdom.  She would not allow herself so silly a cloak of pride; and she went daily to her favourite “Book of Martyrs,” to contemplate there the stories of those who really innocent, really suffered for welldoing.  And out of that book she began to draw a new and a strange enjoyment, for she soon found that her intense imagination enabled her to re-enact those sad and glorious stories in her own person; to tremble, agonise, and conquer with those heroines who had been for years her highest ideals—­and what higher ones could she have?  And many a night, after extinguishing the light, and closing her eyes, she would lie motionless for hours on her little bed, not to sleep, but to feel with Perpetua the wild bull’s horns, to hang with St. Maura on the cross, or lie with Julitta on the rack, or see with triumphant smile, by Anne Askew’s side, the fire flare up around her at the Smithfield stake, or to promise, with dying Dorothea, celestial roses to the mocking youth, whose face too often took the form of Thurnall’s; till every nerve quivered responsive to her fancy in agonies of actual pain,