’Let us go back to my questioning.  Tell me everything about her, from the day when you decided what to do.  Will you?’

‘Freely, and hide nothing whatever that I know.’

For a long time her narrative, broken by questioning, continued.  Egremont listened with earnest countenance, often looking pleased.  At the end, he said: 

‘You have done a good work.  I thank you with all my heart.’

‘Yes, you owe me thanks,’ Mrs. Ormonde returned, quietly.  ’But perhaps you give them for a mistaken reason.’

’In what you have told me of the growth of her character, there is nothing that I did not foresee.  It is good to know that, even then, I was under no foolish illusion.  But the circumstances were needed, and you have supplied them.  How can I be mistaken in thanking you for having so tended her who is to be my wife?’

’Wait, Walter.  You foresaw into what she might develop; it is true, and it enables us to regard the past without too much sadness.  Did you foresee her perfect equanimity, when once she had settled down to a new life?’

He said hesitatingly, ‘No.’

’Believing that she had taken such a desperate step purely through love of you, you thought it more than likely that she would live on in great unhappiness?’

’Her cheerfulness surprises me.  But it isn’t impossible to offer an explanation.  She has foreseen what is now going to happen.  She knows you are my friend; she sees that you are giving great pains to raise her from her former standing in life; what more likely than that she explains it all by guessing the truth?  And so her cheerfulness is the most hopeful sign for me.’

’That is plausible; but you are mistaken.  Long ago I talked to her with much seriousness of all her future.  I spoke of the chances of her being able to earn a living with her voice, and purposely discouraged any great hope in that direction.  Her needlework, and what she had been trained to at the Home, were, I showed her, likely to be her chief resources.  I have even tested her on the subject of her returning to live with her sister.’

’Hope has overcome all these considerations.  You kept her sister from knowing where she was.  Why, if there was not some idea of severing her from her old associations?’

’I explained it to her in one of our talks.  I showed her that her rashness had made it very difficult to aid her.’

‘You spoke of me to her?’

’Never, as I have told you.  Nor has she ever mentioned you.  I pointed out to her that of course I could not explain the state of things to the Emersons, and therefore Lydia had better not visit her for some time.’

Egremont sat down at a distance, and brooded.

‘But a contradiction is involved!’ he exclaimed presently.  ’How can a girl of her character have forgotten so quickly such profound emotion?’

’You must not forget that weeks passed between my finding her and her going to live with the Emersons.  During all that time the poor girl was wretched enough.’