Gratian went towards her, but stopped, and sat down on the bed.  It was true.  She would never have done it herself; it was just that which, for all her longing to help her sister, iced her love and sympathy.  How terrible, wretched, humiliating!  Her own sister, her only sister, in the position of all those poor, badly brought up girls, who forgot themselves!  And her father—­their father!  Till that moment she had hardly thought of him, too preoccupied by the shock to her own pride.  The word:  “Dad!” was forced from her.

Noel shuddered.

“That boy!” said Gratian suddenly; “I can’t forgive him.  If you didn’t know—­he did.  It was—­it was—­” She stopped at the sight of Noel’s face.

“I did know,” she said.  “It was I. He was my husband, as much as yours is.  If you say a word against him, I’ll never speak to you again:  I’m glad, and you would be, if you were going to have one.  What’s the difference, except that you’ve had luck, and I—­haven’t.”  Her lips quivered again, and she was silent.

Gratian stared up at her.  She had a longing for George—­to know what he thought and felt.

“Do you mind if I tell George?” she said.

Noel shook her head.  “No! not now.  Tell anybody.”  And suddenly the misery behind the mask of her face went straight to Gratian’s heart.  She got up and put her arms round her sister.

“Nollie dear, don’t look like that!”

Noel suffered the embrace without response, but when it was over, went to her own room.

Gratian stayed, sorry, sore and vexed, uncertain, anxious.  Her pride was deeply wounded, her heart torn; she was angry with herself.  Why couldn’t she have been more sympathetic?  And yet, now that Noel was no longer there, she again condemned the dead.  What he had done was unpardonable.  Nollie was such—­a child!  He had committed sacrilege.  If only George would come, and she could talk it all out with him!  She, who had married for love and known passion, had insight enough to feel that Noel’s love had been deep—­so far as anything, of course, could be deep in such a child.  Gratian was at the mature age of twenty.  But to have forgotten herself like that!  And this boy!  If she had known him, that feeling might have been mitigated by the personal element, so important to all human judgment; but never having seen him, she thought of his conduct as “caddish.”  And she knew that this was, and would be, the trouble between her and her sister.  However she might disguise it, Noel would feel that judgment underneath.

She stripped off her nurse’s garb, put on an evening frock, and fidgeted about the room.  Anything rather than go down and see her father again before she must.  This, which had happened, was beyond words terrible for him; she dreaded the talk with him about Noel’s health which would have to come.  She could say nothing, of course, until Noel wished; and, very truthful by nature, the idea, of having to act a lie distressed her.