But when she was in conversation with Mrs. Plymdale that comforting explanation seemed no longer tenable.  “Selina” received her with a pathetic affectionateness and a disposition to give edifying answers on the commonest topics, which could hardly have reference to an ordinary quarrel of which the most important consequence was a perturbation of Mr. Bulstrode’s health.  Beforehand Mrs. Bulstrode had thought that she would sooner question Mrs. Plymdale than any one else; but she found to her surprise that an old friend is not always the person whom it is easiest to make a confidant of:  there was the barrier of remembered communication under other circumstances—­ there was the dislike of being pitied and informed by one who had been long wont to allow her the superiority.  For certain words of mysterious appropriateness that Mrs. Plymdale let fall about her resolution never to turn her back on her friends, convinced Mrs. Bulstrode that what had happened must be some kind of misfortune, and instead of being able to say with her native directness, “What is it that you have in your mind?” she found herself anxious to get away before she had heard anything more explicit.  She began to have an agitating certainty that the misfortune was something more than the mere loss of money, being keenly sensitive to the fact that Selina now, just as Mrs. Hackbutt had done before, avoided noticing what she said about her husband, as they would have avoided noticing a personal blemish.

She said good-by with nervous haste, and told the coachman to drive to Mr. Vincy’s warehouse.  In that short drive her dread gathered so much force from the sense of darkness, that when she entered the private counting-house where her brother sat at his desk, her knees trembled and her usually florid face was deathly pale.  Something of the same effect was produced in him by the sight of her:  he rose from his seat to meet her, took her by the hand, and said, with his impulsive rashness—­

“God help you, Harriet! you know all.”

That moment was perhaps worse than any which came after.  It contained that concentrated experience which in great crises of emotion reveals the bias of a nature, and is prophetic of the ultimate act which will end an intermediate struggle.  Without that memory of Raffles she might still have thought only of monetary ruin, but now along with her brother’s look and words there darted into her mind the idea of some guilt in her husband—­then, under the working of terror came the image of her husband exposed to disgrace—­ and then, after an instant of scorching shame in which she felt only the eyes of the world, with one leap of her heart she was at his side in mournful but unreproaching fellowship with shame and isolation.  All this went on within her in a mere flash of time—­ while she sank into the chair, and raised her eyes to her brother, who stood over her.  “I know nothing, Walter.  What is it?” she said, faintly.