She resisted Muriel’s attempt to put her arms about her.  “No—­no, dear!  Hear me first.  There!  Let me kneel beside you.  It will not take me long.  It isn’t just for my own sake I am going to speak, nor yet—­entirely—­for yours.  You will see presently.  Don’t ask me anything—­please—­till I have done.  And then if—­if there is anything you want to know, I will try to tell you.”

“Come and lie beside me,” Muriel urged.

But Daisy would not.  She had sunk very low beside the bed.  For a while she crouched there in silence while she summoned her strength.

Then, “Oh, Muriel,” she suddenly said, and the words seemed to burst from her with a great sigh, “I wonder if you ever really loved Blake.”

“No, dear, I never did.”  Muriel’s answer came quiet and sincere through the darkness.  “Nor did he love me.  Our engagement was a mistake.  I was going to tell him so—­if things had been different.”

“I never thought you cared for him,” Daisy said.  “But oh, Muriel, I did.  I loved him with my whole soul.  No, don’t start!  It is over now—­at least that part of it that was sinful.  I only tell you of it because it is the key to everything that must have puzzled you so horribly all this time.  We always loved each other from the very beginning, but our people wouldn’t hear of it because we were cousins.  And so we separated and I used to think that I had put it away from me.  But—­last summer—­it all came back.  You mustn’t blame him, Muriel.  Blame me—­blame me!” The thin hands tightened convulsively.  “It was when my baby died that I began to give way.  We never meant it—­either of us—­but we didn’t fight hard enough.  And then at last—­at Brethaven—­Nick found it out; and it was because he knew that Blake’s heart was not in his compact with you that he made him write to you and break it off.  It was not for his own ends at all that he did it.  It was for your sake alone.  He even swore to Blake that if he would put an end to his engagement, he on his part would give up all idea of winning you and would never trouble you any more.  And that was the finest thing he ever did, Muriel, for he never loved any one but you.  Surely you know it.  You must know it by this time.  You have never understood him, but you must have begun to realise that he has loved you well enough to set your happiness and well-being always far, far before his own.”

Daisy paused.  Her weeping had wholly ceased, but she was shivering from head to foot.

Muriel sat in silence above her, watching wide-eyed, unseeing, the vague hint of light at the open window.  She was beginning to understand many things—­ah, many things—­that had been as a sealed book to her till then.