She went upstairs, intending to go straight to her own room. She did not want to exhibit her grief before kindly Miss Scales. She shrank from her governess’s sympathy--would not for worlds have told her secret, or bared her wounds, or allowed Cyril’s affection to be canvassed or criticised. She wanted no one’s sympathy or advice, and had fully made up her mind as to her future course. ‘If he will be steadfast to me I will be true to him,’ she said within herself. ‘I laugh at the thought of poverty if it is to be shared with him.’ In the dimly lighted corridor she stopped suddenly, with a start of surprise. Something had happened which she had never known to occur before. The key was in the lock of her mother’s room,--that sealed chamber, the picture of which was more dimly painted on her memory than a dream of past years--the room she had so languished to see. Without a thought of whether it were right or wrong she ran to her room at the other end of the corridor, fetched a candle, and went back to her mother’s door. The door was unlocked. She took out the key, went in, and locked the door inside, to secure herself from interruption. ‘Dear room,’ she said, looking round in the dim light. ‘Yes, I remember it better now--and mamma sitting there in that low chair by the fire--and I lying on that white rug with my toys scattered about. Ah, what happy days! The soft fleecy whiteness used to remind me of snow. And then when I was tired of play mamma used to take me into her lap and sing to me. Oh, how I loved her! No, there is no love like that--no love so sweet, so strong, so holy! Mother, if you could come back to me for a few short years I would give up Cyril. I would sacrifice that newer love for the old one--for the old love was dearer, sweeter, closer, better.’ She flung herself on her knees beside the empty chair, and sobbed out her passionate grief. It seemed to her almost as if there were sympathy in that contact--a kind of sympathy which comforted her soul. To these dumb things which breathed of her mother’s presence she could pour out her sorrow, she could lay bare her heart. No pride restrained her here. So she remained for a long time, till her passion had almost worn itself out in weeping. Then she rose and looked round the room, and then slowly examined each once familiar object, candle in hand. The dust lay white upon everything, and the spider had spun his gauzy draperies from curtain to curtain. Yes. Everything was as she had faintly remembered it. There stood the Japanese cabinets, with their rich raised work representing dragons, and birds, and fishes, and golden trees, and golden bridges, and golden temples, all golden on a shining black ground. How often she had stood before one of those cabinets, admiring the strange creatures! ‘Are they all gold when they are alive, mamma?’ she had asked once, ‘and do they swim in black water?’