It was a former question repeated in another way.  Mrs. Ormonde kept silence.  It was several minutes before Thyrza spoke again.

’I don’t know whether you will tell me, but did he think of any one else as well as of me when he came back to England?’

‘I am not sure, Thyrza.’

‘Will you tell me what friends he has gone to see?’

‘Their name is Newthorpe.’

‘Miss Newthorpe—­the same I once saw here?’

‘Yes.’

‘What is Miss Newthorpe’s name, Mrs. Ormonde?’

‘Annabel.’

Thyrza moved her lips as if they felt parched.  She asked nothing further, seemed indeed to forget that she had been conversing.  She watched the waving branches of a tree in the garden.

Mrs. Ormonde had followed the working of the girl’s mind with intense observation.  She knew not whether to fear or to be glad of the strange tranquillity that had succeeded upon such uncontrolled vehemence.  What she seemed to gather from Thyrza’s words she scarcely ventured to believe.  It was a satisfaction to her that she had avoided naming Egremont’s address, yet a satisfaction that caused her some shame.  Indeed, it was the sense of shame that perhaps distressed her most in Thyrza’s presence.  Egremont’s perishable love, her own prudential forecasts and schemings, were stamped poor, worldly, ignoble, in comparison with this sacred and extinguishable ardour.  As a woman she felt herself rebuked by the ideal of womanly fidelity; she was made to feel the inferiority of her nature to that which fate had chosen for this supreme martyrdom.  In her glances at Thyrza’s face she felt, with new force, how spiritual was its beauty.  For in soulless features, however regular and attractive, suffering reveals the flesh; this girl, stricken with deadly pallor, led the thoughts to the purest ideals of womanhood transfigured by woe in the pictures of old time.

‘I will go by the train at twelve o’clock,’ Thyrza said, moving at length.

’I want you to stay with me till to-morrow—­just till tomorrow morning, Thyrza.  If my presence pains you, I will keep away.  But stay till to-morrow.’

‘If you wish it, Mrs. Ormonde.’

‘Will you go out?  Into the garden?  To the shore?’

‘I had rather stay here.’

She kept her place by the window through the whole day, as she had sat in her own room in London.  She could not have borne to see the waves white on the beach and the blue horizon; the sea that she had loved so, that she had called her friend, would break her heart with its song of memories.  She must not think of anything now, only, if it might be, put her soul to sleep and let the sobbing waters of oblivion bear it onwards through the desolate hours.  She had no pain; her faculties were numbed; her will had spent itself.

Mrs. Ormonde brought her meals, speaking only a word of gentleness.  In the evening Thyrza said to her: