“Good gracious! why are we waiting here?” she cried, drying her eyes quickly and ceasing to sob.  “You will both get your deaths from cold if you stand here in your wet clothes.—­Come in, dear Leam, and I will drive you home at once.—­Fina, my darling, leave off crying, that’s my little angel.  I will take you to papa, and you will be all right directly.  I cannot bear to see you cry so much, dear Fina:  don’t, my pet.”

Which only made the little one weep I and sob the more, children, like women, liking nothing better than to be commiserated because of distress which they could; control without difficulty if they would.

Seating the child at the bottom of the carriage and covering her with the rug, Josephine flicked her ponies, which were glad enough to be off and doing something to which they were accustomed, and soon brought her dripping charge to Ford House, where they found Mr. Dundas in the porch drawing on his gloves, his horse standing at the door.

“Good heavens! what is all this about?” he cried, rushing forward to receive the disconsolate cargo, unloading one by one the whole group dank and dismal—­Josephine’s scared face swollen with tears, white and red in the wrong places; Leam’s set like a mask, blanched, rigid, tragic; Fina’s now flushed and angry, now pale and frightened, with a child’s swift-varying emotions; and the garments of the last two clinging like cerements and dripping small pools on the gravel.

“Learn pushed me into the river,” said Fina, beginning to cry afresh, and holding on by Josephine, who now kissed and coaxed her, and said, “Fina, my darling, don’t say such a wicked thing of poor Leam:  it is so naughty, so very naughty,” and then took to hugging her again, as the mood of the instant swayed her toward the child or the girl, but always full of womanly weakness and kindness to each, and only troubled that she had to make distinctions, as it were, between them.

“What is it you say, Fina?” asked Mr. Dundas slowly—­“Leam pushed you into the river?”

“Yes,” sobbed Fina.

“I did not, papa.  And I went in myself to save her,” said Leam, holding her head very straight and high.

Mr. Dundas looked at her keenly, sternly.  “Well, no, Leam,” he answered, with, as it seemed to her, marked coldness and in a strange voice:  “with all your unpleasant temper I do not like to suppose you could be guilty of the crime of murder.”

The girl shuddered visibly.  Her proud little head drooped, her fixed and fearless eyes sank shamed to the ground.  “I have always taken care of Fina,” she said in a humbled voice, as if it was a plea for pardon that she was putting forward.

“You pushed me in, and you did it on purpose,” repeated Fina; and Mr. Dundas was shocked at himself to find that he speculated for a moment on the amount of truth there might be in the child’s statement.

Cold, trembling, distressed, Leam turned away.  Would that sin of hers always thus meet her face to face?  Should she never be free from its shadow?  Go where she would, it followed her, ineffaceable, irreparable—­the shame of it never suffered to die out, its remorse never quenched, the sword always above her head, to fall she knew not when, but to fall some day:  yes, that she did know.