She made a wide circuit on the grass, so as to turn gradually and meet her sister without exciting suspicion that the meeting was contrived.  Her heart beat fast; a burning heat glowed in her as she thought of her false hair, her false color, her false dress, and saw the dear familiar face coming nearer and nearer.  They passed each other close.  Norah’s dark gentle eyes looked up, with a deeper light in them, with a sadder beauty than of old—­rested, all unconscious of the truth, on her sister’s face—­and looked away from it again as from the face of a stranger.  That glance of an instant struck Magdalen to the heart.  She stood rooted to the ground after Norah had passed by.  A horror of the vile disguise that concealed her; a yearning to burst its trammels and hide her shameful painted face on Norah’s bosom, took possession of her, body and soul.  She turned and looked back.

Norah and the two children had reached the higher ground, and were close to one of the gates in the iron railing which fenced the Park from the street.  Drawn by an irresistible fascination, Magdalen followed them again, gained on them as they reached the gate, and heard the voices of the two children raised in angry dispute which way they wanted to walk next.  She saw Norah take them through the gate, and then stoop and speak to them, while waiting for an opportunity to cross the road.  They only grew the louder and the angrier for what she said.  The youngest—­a girl of eight or nine years old—­flew into a child’s vehement passion, cried, screamed, and even kicked at the governess.  The people in the street stopped and laughed; some of them jestingly advised a little wholesome correction; one woman asked Norah if she was the child’s mother; another pitied her audibly for being the child’s governess.  Before Magdalen could push her way through the crowd—­before her all-mastering anxiety to help her sister had blinded her to every other consideration, and had brought her, self-betrayed, to Norah’s side—­an open carriage passed the pavement slowly, hindered in its progress by the press of vehicles before it.  An old lady seated inside heard the child’s cries, recognized Norah, and called to her immediately.  The footman parted the crowd, and the children were put into the carriage.  “It’s lucky I happened to pass this way,” said the old lady, beckoning contemptuously to Norah to take her place on the front seat; “you never could manage my daughter’s children, and you never will.”  The footman put up the steps, the carriage drove on with the children and the governess, the crowd dispersed, and Magdalen was alone again.

“So be it!” she thought, bitterly.  “I should only have distressed her.  We should only have had the misery of parting to suffer again.”