“She may be.”

“It’s good of you to come and sit here while she rests.  She hasn’t gone to bed for two nights.  She’s the only one of us that cares for me.  Barbara has got her husband; well, I’m glad of that.  And there’s no knowing; she might live to be Lady Musselwhite.  Sir Roland hasn’t any children.  Doesn’t it make you laugh?”

She herself tried to laugh—­a ghostly sound.  It seemed to exhaust her.  For half an hour no word was spoken.  Then Cecily, who had fallen into brooding, heard herself called by a strange name.

“Miss Doran!”

She rose and bent over the bed, startled by this summons from the dead past.

“Can I do anything for you, Madeline?”

The heavy eyes looked at her in a perplexed way.  They seemed to be just awaking, and Madeline smiled faintly.

“Didn’t I call you, Miss Doran?  I was thinking about you, and got confused.  But you are married, of course.  What is your name now?  I can’t remember.”

“Mrs. Elgar.”

“How silly of me!  Mrs. Elgar, of course.  Are you happily married?”

“Why do you ask?”

For the first time, she remembered the possibility that the Denyers knew of her disgrace.  But Madeline’s reply seemed to prove that she, at all events, had no such thing in mind.

“I was only trying to remember whom you married.  Yes, yes; you told us about it before.  Or else.  Mrs. Travis told me.”

“What did she say?”

“Only that you had married for love, as every woman ought to.  But she is very unhappy.  Perhaps that would have been my own lot if I had lived.  I dare say I should have been married long ago.  What does it matter?  But as long as one is born at all, one might as well live life through, see the best as well as the worst of it.  It’s been all worst with me.—­Oh, that’s coming again!  That wishing and rebelling and despairing!  I thought it was all over.  You stand there and look at me; that is you and this is I, this, this!  I am lying here waiting for death and burial.  You have the husband you love, and long years of happy life before you.—­Do you feel sorry for me?  Suppose it was you who lay here?”

The same question she had put to Mrs. Travis, but now spoken in a more anguished voice.  The tear’s streamed from Cecily’s eyes.

“You cry, like Zillah does when she tries to persuade me.  I don’t know whether I had rather be pitied, or lie quite alone.  But don’t cry.  You shan’t go away and be made miserable by thinking of me.  I can bear it all well enough; there can’t be much more of it, you know.  Sit down again, if you have time.  Perhaps you want to go somewhere to-night—­to see friends?”

“No.  I will stay with you as long as ever you wish.”

Presently the conversation ceased, and then for nearly three hours Cecily listened to the sound of breathing.  At length the door softly opened, and Zillah came in.  She was distressed; it had struck twelve long since, and only now had she awoke from sleep.  Cecily entreated her to go and sleep again; she herself had no desire to close her eyes.