An end was put to this smooth arrangement by the sudden appearance in the churchyard one day of the Lady Caroline, when Milly had come there on her usual errand of laying flowers. Lady Caroline had been anxiously awaiting her behind the chancel, and her countenance was pale and agitated. 'Milly!' she said, 'come here! I don't know how to say to you what I am going to say. I am half dead!' 'I am sorry for your ladyship,' says Milly, wondering. 'Give me that ring!' says the lady, snatching at the girl's left hand. Milly drew it quickly away. 'I tell you give it to me!' repeated Caroline, almost fiercely. 'Oh--but you don't know why? I am in a grief and a trouble I did not expect!' And Lady Caroline whispered a few words to the girl. 'O my lady!' said the thunderstruck Milly. 'What _will_ you do?' 'You must say that your statement was a wicked lie, an invention, a scandal, a deadly sin--that I told you to make it to screen me! That it was I whom he married at Bath. In short, we must tell the truth, or I am ruined--body, mind, and reputation--for ever!' But there is a limit to the flexibility of gentle-souled women. Milly by this time had so grown to the idea of being one flesh with this young man, of having the right to bear his name as she bore it; had so thoroughly come to regard him as her husband, to dream of him as her husband, to speak of him as her husband, that she could not relinquish him at a moment's peremptory notice. 'No, no,' she said desperately, 'I cannot, I will not give him up! Your ladyship took him away from me alive, and gave him back to me only when he was dead. Now I will keep him! I am truly his widow. More truly than you, my lady! for I love him and mourn for him, and call myself by his dear name, and your ladyship does neither!' 'I _do_ love him!' cries Lady Caroline with flashing eyes, 'and I cling to him, and won't let him go to such as you! How can I, when he is the father of this poor babe that's coming to me? I must have him back again! Milly, Milly, can't you pity and understand me, perverse girl that you are, and the miserable plight that I am in? Oh, this precipitancy--it is the ruin of women! Why did I not consider, and wait! Come, give me back all that I have given you, and assure me you will support me in confessing the truth!' 'Never, never!' persisted Milly, with woe-begone passionateness. 'Look at this headstone! Look at my gown and bonnet of crape--this ring: listen to the name they call me by! My character is worth as much to me as yours is to you! After declaring my Love mine, myself his, taking his name, making his death my own particular sorrow, how can I say it was not so? No such dishonour for me! I will outswear you, my lady; and I shall be believed. My story is so much the more likely that yours will be thought false. But, O please, my lady, do not drive me to this! In pity let me keep him!'