“You will be brave?” Betty appealed to her.  “You will not give way, Rosy?”

“Yes, I must be brave—­I am not ill now.  I must not fail you—­I won’t, Betty, but——­”

She slipped upon the floor and dropped her face upon the girl’s knee, sobbing.

Betty bent over her, putting her arms round the heaving shoulders, and pleading with her to speak.  Was there something more to be told, something she did not know?

“Yes, yes.  Oh, I ought to have told you long ago—­but I have always been afraid and ashamed.  It has made everything so much worse.  I was afraid you would not understand and would think me wicked—­wicked.”

It was Betty who now lost a shade of colour.  But she held the slim little body closer and kissed her sister’s cheek.

“What have you been afraid and ashamed to tell me?  Do not be ashamed any more.  You must not hide anything, no matter what it is, Rosy.  I shall understand.”

“I know I must not hide anything, now that all is over and father is coming.  It is—­it is about Mr. Ffolliott.”

“Mr. Ffolliott?” repeated Betty quite softly.

Lady Anstruthers’ face, lifted with desperate effort, was like a weeping child’s.  So much so in its tear-wet simpleness and utter lack of any effort at concealment, that after one quick look at it Betty’s hastened pulses ceased to beat at double-quick time.

“Tell me, dear,” she almost whispered.

“Mr. Ffolliott himself does not know—­and I could not help it.  He was kind to me when I was dying of unkindness.  You don’t know what it was like to be drowning in loneliness and misery, and to see one good hand stretched out to help you.  Before he went away—­oh, Betty, I know it was awful because I was married!—­I began to care for him very much, and I have cared for him ever since.  I cannot stop myself caring, even though I am terrified.”

Betty kissed her again with a passion of tender pity.  Poor little, simple Rosy, too!  The tide had crept around her also, and had swept her off her feet, tossing her upon its surf like a wisp of seaweed and bearing her each day farther from firm shore.

“Do not be terrified,” she said.  “You need only be afraid if—­if you had told him.”

“He will never know—­never.  Once in the middle of the night,” there was anguish in the delicate face, pure anguish, “a strange loud cry wakened me, and it was I myself who had cried out—­because in my sleep it had come home to me that the years would go on and on, and at last some day he would die and go out of the world—­and I should die and go out of the world.  And he would never know—­even know.”

Betty’s clasp of her loosened and she sat very still, looking straight before her into some unseen place.

“Yes,” she said involuntarily.  “Yes, I know—­I know—­I know.”

Lady Anstruthers fell back a little to gaze at her.

“You know?  You know?” she breathed.  “Betty?”