"You will have no better time than the present," said the Rector. "If there is anything that you feel should be confessed, confess it now. It is God's voice calling to you, not mine. Your mother cleared her conscience before she died, do you the same. I bid you in God's name." Maurice Evandale did not often speak after this fashion; he was no fanatic, no bigot, but he believed intensely in the great eternal truths which he preached, and in the presence of death--in the presence also, as he believed, of mortal sin--he could not do less than appeal to what was highest and best in the nature of the woman before him. What she had to accuse herself of he could not possibly imagine; but he knew that there was something. By the dead woman's incoherent words, by Sabina Meldreth's violence, by Enid's stricken look of perplexity and pain, he knew that something lay hidden which ought to be brought to light. The winter's day was drawing to a close. Through the uncurtained window the light stole dimly, and the reddened coals in the tiny grate threw but a feeble gleam into the room. In every corner shadows seemed to cluster, and the dead woman's face looked horribly pale and ghastly in the surrounding gloom. The Rector waited with a feeling that the moment was unutterably solemn; that it was fraught with the destiny of a suffering, sinning human being--for aught he knew, with the destinies of more than one. Suddenly the woman before him threw up her hands as if to shut out the sight of her dead mother's face. "I have nothing to tell you--nothing!" she cried. "What business have you here? You teased my mother out of her last few minutes of life, and now you want to get the mastery over me! It's my house now, my room--not my mother's--and you may go out of it." "Is that all you have to say," asked the Rector gravely--"even in her presence, Sabina Meldreth?" "Yes, that's all," she answered, the old fierceness creeping back into her tones. "What else should I have to say? I suppose you can have me taken up for assault; Miss Vane will bear witness in your favor fast enough, no doubt. I don't care!" "Do you not care even when you think what I kept you back from?" said Mr. Evandale. "Your mother was old, weak, dying, and you threw yourself upon her with violence. You will remember that some day, and will bless me perhaps because I withheld your hand. Your attack upon me matters nothing. I am willing to believe that you did not know what you were doing. I will leave you know--it is not seemly that we should discuss this matter any further. But, if ever you want help or counsel--and the day may come, my poor woman, when you may want both--then come to me." He opened the door, went out, and closed it behind him, leaving Sabina Meldreth alone with the dead.