’My dearest, I know, I feel with you!  But it will be better now you’ve told me.  And to-night?  Didn’t you see him to-night?’

‘How do you know?  Who told you?’ she asked, nervously.

‘No one, dear.  I only think it.  The way you came in—­’

Thyrza suddenly bent forward, listening.

‘Can any one hear us?’ she whispered.  ’Go and see any one’s outside.’

‘There’s no one, dear.’

‘Go and look.  I’m afraid.’

Lydia went and opened the door.  She closed it again, and came back shaking her head.

‘I didn’t think I should see him,’ Thyrza continued.  ’I was waiting in Totty’s room, and he came to see Mr. Bunce.  I heard his voice.  When he went away, I followed him.  I couldn’t help myself.  I would have given my life for a word from him.  I wanted to know why he hadn’t come this morning.  I followed him, and walked with him over the bridge.  Then he told me he was going away, somewhere out of England, and I shouldn’t see him again till after—­after I was married.’

She choked.  Lydia soothed her again, and she continued, with growing agitation: 

’Then he said good-bye—­he went away very quickly, after just saying he hoped I should be happy.  Happy!  How can I be happy?  And when he was gone, I went somewhere and fell down and cried—­ somewhere where nobody could see me.  He’s gone, Lyddy!  How am I to live without him?’

They held each other.  Thyrza sobbed out her anguish until strength failed, then lay in her sister’s arms, pale as a corpse.

When there had been utter silence for a while, Lydia asked: 

’And he has never said anything to you that—­that he oughtn’t to have said!’

‘Said?  What did you think?  You thought he—­he loved me?’

‘I didn’t know, dearest.’

’Oh, if he did!  He asked me not to call him ‘sir,’ and to be his friend—­never more than that.  You thought he loved me?  How could he love a girl like me, Lyddy?’

Lydia had followed the unfolding of the tale with growing surprise.  It was impossible to doubt Thyrza’s truthfulness.  Yet there must be more on Egremont’s part than appeared.  Why did he exact secrecy about those meetings in the library?  There was little doubt that Thyrza had betrayed herself to him.  True, he had refrained from keeping the appointment for this morning, and it seemed he was going away till after the marriage.  But all this was too late.

Still he was innocent of the guilt she had suspected.  Thyrza had not come to the dreaded harm.  Though heartbroken, she was saved.  Lydia felt almost joyous for an instant.  Bower’s gossip might yet be deprived of its sting, for Mr. Egremont would be gone, and—­Monday was so near.

It was the reaction from her terror.  She could think of nothing for the moment but that Thyrza must be preserved from future risk by marriage.

Thyrza was lying exhausted.  Lydia, deep in thought, was surprised to see a faint smile on the beautiful pale face.