She snatched her hand from his without a word, and rushed out of the shop.

He returned to his packing, whistling away as shrill as any blackbird.

Little did he think that Grace’s heart was bursting, as she hurried down the street, covering her face in her veil, as if every one would espy her dark secret in her countenance.

But she did not go home to hysterics and vain tears.  An awful purpose had arisen in her mind, under the pressure of that great agony.  Heavens, how she loved that man!  To be suspected by him was torture.  But she could bear that.  It was her cross; she could carry it, lie down on it, and endure:  but wrong him she could not—­would not!  It was sinful enough while he was there; but doubly, unbearably sinful, when he was going to a foreign country, when he would need every farthing he had.  So not for her own sake, but for his, she spoke to her mother when she went home, and found her sitting over her Bible in the little parlour, vainly trying to find a text which suited her distemper.

“Mother, you have the Bible before you there.”

“Yes, child!  Why?  What?” asked she, looking up uneasily.

Grace fixed her eyes on the ground.  She could not look her mother in the face.

“Do you ever read the thirty-second Psalm, mother?”

“Which?  Why not, child?”

“Let us read it together then, now.”

And Grace, taking up her own Bible, sat quietly down and read, as none in that parish save she could read: 

“Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, and whose sin is covered.

“Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no guile.

“When I kept silence, my bones waxed old, through my groaning all the day long.

“For day and night Thy hand was heavy upon me; my moisture is turned to the drought of summer.

“I acknowledge my sin unto Thee, and mine iniquity have I not hid.

“I said, I will confess my transgressions unto the Lord; and Thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin.”

Grace stopped, choked with tears which the pathos of her own voice had called up.  She looked at her mother.  There were no tears in her eyes:  only a dull thwart look of terror and suspicion.  The shaft, however bravely and cunningly sped, had missed its mark.

Poor Grace!  Her usual eloquence utterly failed her, as most things do in which one is wont to trust, before the pressure of a real and horrible evil.  She had no heart to make fine sentences, to preach a brilliant sermon of commonplaces.  What could she say that her mother had not known long before she was born?  And throwing herself on her knees at her mother’s feet, she grasped both her hands and looked into her face imploringly,—­“Mother! mother! mother!” was all that she could say:  but their tone meant more than all words.—­Reproof, counsel, comfort, utter tenderness, and under-current of clear deep trust, bubbling up from beneath all passing suspicions, however dark and foul, were in it:  but they were vain.