“He does! he does!” she shrieked; “but I will have my revenge.  I can and I will.”

And, darting past me, she rushed out into the storm.  I followed, and could just see that she took the way to the village.  Her dim shape went down the wind before me into the darkness.  I followed in the same direction, fast and faster, for the wind was behind me, and a vague fear which ever grew in my heart urged me to overtake her.  What had I done?  To what might I not have driven her?  And although all I had said was true, and I had spoken from motives which, as far as I knew my own heart, I could not condemn, yet, as I sped after her, there came a reaction of feeling from the severity with which I had displayed her own case against her.  “Ah! poor sister,” I thought, “was it for me thus to reproach thee who had suffered already so fiercely?  If the Spirit speaking in thy heart could not win thee, how should my words of hard accusation, true though they were, every one of them, rouse in thee anything but the wrath that springs from shame?  Should I not have tried again, and yet again, to waken thy love; and then a sweet and healing shame, like that of her who bathed the Master’s feet with her tears, would have bred fresh love, and no wrath.”

But again I answered for myself, that my heart had not been the less tender towards her that I had tried to humble her, for it was that she might slip from under the net of her pride.  Even when my tongue spoke the hardest things I could find, my heart was yearning over her.  If I could but make her feel that she too had been wrong, would not the sense of common wrong between them help her to forgive?  And with the first motion of willing pardon, would not a spring of tenderness, grief, and hope, burst from her poor old dried-up heart, and make it young and fresh once more!  Thus I reasoned with myself as I followed her back through the darkness.

The wind fell a little as we came near the village, and the rain began to come down in torrents.  There must have been a moon somewhere behind the clouds, for the darkness became less dense, and I began to fancy I could again see the dim shape which had rushed from me.  I increased my speed, and became certain of it.  Suddenly, her strength giving way, or her foot stumbling over something in the road, she fell to the earth with a cry.

I was beside her in a moment.  She was insensible.  I did what I could for her, and in a few minutes she began to come to herself.

“Where am I?  Who is it?” she asked, listlessly.

When she found who I was, she made a great effort to rise, and succeeded.

“You must take my arm,” I said, “and I will help you to the vicarage.”

“I will go home,” she answered.

“Lean on me now, at least; for you must get somewhere.”

“What does it matter?” she said, in such a tone of despair, that it went to my very heart.

A wild half-cry, half-sob followed, and then she took my arm, and said nothing more.  Nor did I trouble her with any words, except, when we readied the gate, to beg her to come into the vicarage instead of going home.  But she would not listen to me, and so I took her home.