"How well I remember that voice," Lady Elliston smiled a little sadly: "It's the girl's voice of twenty years ago--holding me away. Can't we be frank together, now, Amabel, when we are both middle-aged women?--at least I am middle-aged.--How it has kept you young, this strange life you've led." "But, really, I do not understand," Amabel murmured, confused; "I didn't understand you then, sometimes." "Then I may be frank?" "Yes; be frank, of course." "It is only that indignation that I want to express," said Lady Elliston, tentative no longer and firmly advancing. "Why are you here, in this dismal room, this dismal house? Why have you let yourself be cloistered like this? Why haven't you come out and claimed things?" Amabel's grey eyes, even in their serenity always a little wild, widened with astonishment. "Claimed?" she repeated. "What do you mean? What could I have claimed? I have been given everything." "My dear Amabel, you speak as if you had deserved this imprisonment." There was another and a longer silence in which Amabel seemed slowly to find meanings incredible to her before. And her reception of them was expressed in the changed, the hardened voice with which she said: "You know everything. I've always been sure you knew. How can you say such things to me?" "Do not be angry with me, dear Amabel. I do not mean to offend." "You spoke as though you were sorry for me, as though I had been injured.--It touches him." "But," Lady Elliston had flushed very slightly, "it does touch him. I blame Hugh for this. He ought not to have allowed it. He ought not to have accepted such misplaced penitence. You were a mere child, and Hugh neglected you shamefully." "I was not a mere child," said Amabel. "I was a sinful woman." Lady Elliston sat still, as if arrested and spell-bound by the unexpected words. She seemed to find no answer. And as the silence grew long, Amabel went on, slowly, with difficulty, yet determinedly opposing and exposing the folly of the implied accusation. "You don't seem to remember the facts. I betrayed my husband. He might have cast me off. He might have disgraced me and my child. And he lifted me up; he sheltered me; he gave his name to the child. He has given me everything I have. You see--you must not speak of him like that to me." Lady Elliston had gathered herself together though still, it was evident, bewildered. "I don't mean to blame Hugh so much. It was your fault, too, I suppose. You asked for the cloister, I know." "No; I didn't ask for it. I asked to be allowed to go away and hide myself. The cloister, too, was a gift,--like my name, my undishonoured child." "Dear, dear Amabel," said Lady Elliston, gazing at her, "how beautiful of you to be able to feel like that."