If only she could have time to reflect.  Whatever she did now, in this agitation, she might bitterly repent.  Only under stress of the direst necessity could she summon Egremont back; there was something repugnant to her instinct, something impossible, in the thought of undoing all she had done.  Egremont’s position would be ignoble.  Impossible to retrace her steps!

‘I have no wish to prevent you from seeing him, Thyrza,’ she said, making her resolve even as she spoke.  ’He is not in London now, but he will be back before long, I think.’

‘Is he in England?’

’Yes; in the North.  He has gone to see friends.  You don’t know that he has been in America during these two years?’

Something was gained if Thyrza could be brought to listen with interest to details.

’In America?  But he came back at the time.  How could you refuse to keep your promise?  What did he say to you?  How could he go away again and let you break your word to him in that way?’

Mrs. Ormonde said, as gently as she could: 

’I didn’t break my word, Thyrza.  I gave him your address.  He had it on Friday night.’

She, whose nature it was to trust implicitly, now dreaded a deceit in every word.  She gazed at Mrs. Ormonde, without change of countenance.

‘And,’ she said, slowly, ‘you persuaded him not to come.’

Mrs. Ormonde paused before replying.

’Thyrza, is all your faith in me at an end?  Cannot I speak to you like I used to, and be sure that you trust my kindness to you, that you trust my love?’

‘Your love?’ Thyrza repeated, more coldly than she had spoken yet.  ‘And you persuaded him not to come to me.’

‘It is true, I did.’

Mrs. Ormonde had never spoken to any one with a feeling of humiliation like this which made her bend her head.  Thyrza still looked at her, but no longer with hostility.  She gazed with wonder, with doubt.

‘Why did you do that to me, Mrs. Ormonde?’

There was heart-breaking pathos in the simple words.  Tears rushed to the listener’s eyes.

’My child, if I had known the truth, I should have said not a word to prevent his going.  I did not know that you still loved him, hard as it is for you to believe that.  I was deceived by your face.  I have watched you month after month, and, as I knew nothing of your reason for hope, I thought you had found comfort in other things.  Cannot you believe me, Thyrza?’

‘And you told him that?’

’Yes, I told him what I thought was the truth.  Thyrza, I have been cruel to you, but I had no thought that I was so.’

Thyrza asked, after a silence: 

‘But you told him where I was living?’

’I told him; he asked me, and I told him, as I had promised I would.’

Thyrza stood in deep thought.  Mrs. Ormonde again took her hands.

’Dear, come and sit down.  You are worn out with your trouble.  Don’t repel me, Thyrza.  I have done you a great wrong, and I know you cannot feel to me as you did; but I am not so hard-hearted that your suffering does not pierce me through.  Only sit here and rest.’