So he had been praising my voice.  What an odd man!

I stayed at the cottage about two hours, and read a little to the children and Elspeth, and then I started for the Lockes’.

Kitty clapped her hands when she heard she was to go to church with her aunt Susan.  I found out afterwards the child had always gone alone.

Phoebe was evidently expecting me, for her eyes were fixed on the door as I entered, and the same shadowy smile I had seen once before swept over her wan features when she saw me.  She seemed ready and eager to talk, but I adhered to my usual programme.  I was rather afraid that our conversation would excite her, so I wanted to quiet her first.  I sang a few of my favourite hymns, and then read the evening psalms.  She heard me somewhat reluctantly, but when I had finished her face cleared, and without any preamble she commenced her story.

I never remember that recital without pain.  It positively wrung my heart to listen to her.  I had heard the outline of her sad story from her sister’s lips, but it had lacked colour; it had been a simple statement of facts, and no more.

But now Phoebe’s passionate words seemed to clothe it with power; the very sight of the ghastly and almost distracted face on the pillow gave a miserable pathos to the story.  It was in vain to check excitement while the unhappy creature poured out the history of her wrongs:  the old old story, of a credulous woman’s heart being trampled upon and tortured by an unworthy lover, was enacted again before me.

’I just worshipped the ground he walked on, and he threw me aside like a broken toy,’ she said over and over again.  ’And the worst of it is that, villain as he is, I cannot unlove him, though I am that mad with him sometimes that I could almost murder him.’

‘Love is strong as death, and jealousy is cruel as the grave,’ I muttered, half to myself, but she overheard me.

‘Ay, that is just true,’ she returned eagerly:  ’there are times when I hate Robert and Nancy and would like to haunt them.  Did I not tell you, Miss Garston, that hell had begun with me already?  I was never a good woman,—­never, not even when I was happy and Robert loved me.  I was just full of him, and wanted nothing else in heaven and earth; and when the trouble came, and father and mother died, and I lay here like a log,—­only a log has not got a living heart in it,—­I seemed to go mad with the anger and unhappiness, and I felt “the worm that dieth not, and the fire that is not quenched."’

I stooped over and wiped her poor lips and poor head, for she was fearfully exhausted, and then in a perfect passion of pity closed her face between my hands and bade God bless her.

‘What do you mean?’ she said, staring at me; but her voice trembled.  ’Haven’t I been telling you how wicked I am?  Do you think that is a reason for His blessing me?’

’I think His blessing has always been with you, my poor Phoebe, like the sunlight that you try to shut out from your windows.  You hide yourself in your own darkness, and pretend that the all-embracing love is not for you.  Well may you call your present existence a tomb; but you must not wrong your Almighty Father.  Not He, but you yourself have walled yourself up with your own sinful hands, and then you wonder at the weight that lies upon your heart.’