Again there was a short silence.  Margaret was searching for some word of comfort.

“But you did what you could for him, did you not?  And—­and even Ralph, I think I heard—­”

Beatrice turned and looked at her steadily.  Margaret read in her face something she could not understand.

“Yes—­Ralph?” said Beatrice questioningly.

“You told father so, did you not?  He did what he could for Master More?”

Beatrice laid her other hand too over Margaret’s.

“My dear; I do not know.  I cannot speak of that.”

“But you said—­”

“Margaret, my pet; you would not hurt me, would you?  I do not think I can bear to speak of that.”

The nun gripped the other’s two hands passionately, and laid her cheek against them.

“Beatrice, I did not know—­I forgot.”

Beatrice stooped and kissed her gently.

* * * * *

The nun loved her tenfold more after that.  It had been before a kind of passionate admiration, such as a subject might feel for a splendid queen; but the queen had taken this timid soul in through the palace-gates now, into a little inner chamber intimate and apart, and had sat with her there and shown her everything, her broken toys, her failures; and more than all her own broken heart.  And as, after that evening, Margaret watched Beatrice again in public, heard her retorts and marked her bearing, she knew that she knew something that the others did not; she had the joy of sharing a secret of pain.  But there was one wound that Beatrice did not show her; that secret was reserved for one who had more claim to it, and could understand.  The nun could not have interpreted it rightly.

* * * * *

Mary and Nicholas went back to Great Keynes at the end of January; and Beatrice was out on the terrace with the others to see them go.  Jim, the little seven-year-old boy, had fallen in love with her, ever since he had found that she treated him like a man, with deference and courtesy, and did not talk about him in his presence and over his head.  He was walking with her now, a little apart, as the horses came round, and explaining to her how it was that he only rode a pony at present, and not a horse.

“My legs would not reach, Mistress Atherton,” he said, protruding a small leather boot.  “It is not because I am afraid, or father either.  I rode Jess, the other day, but not astride.”

“I quite understand,” said Beatrice respectfully, without the shadow of laughter in her face.

“You see—­” began the boy.

Then his mother came up.

“Run, Jim, and hold my horse.  Mistress Beatrice, may I have a word with you?”

The two turned and walked down to the end of the terrace again.

“It is this,” said Mary, looking at the other from under her plumed hat, with her skirt gathered up with her whip in her gloved hand.  “I wished to tell you about my mother.  I have not dared till now.  I have never seen her so stirred in my life, as she is now.  I—­I think she will do anything you wish in time.  It is useless to feign that we do not understand one another—­anything you wish—­come back to her Faith perhaps; treat my father better.  She—­she loves you, I think; and yet dare not—­”