"I know better than you do whether I've succeeded or failed. I'm speaking of this particular instance, and what I say is this, if you breathe a word of what I have told you to Walter, or to any one, I give the whole thing up! Work like this is generally paid for, but I do not care whether it is paid or not. I should be glad to do it for nothing. Since you do care for money, you had better see that you don't lose whatever there is in it by talking about it." He went downstairs, his knees shaking under him, but a heavenly sense of freedom in his heart. In the dining-room he found Cora standing by the window waiting for the advent of her elders. He had meant to talk to her, but this was not the time. He felt a sudden, keen pity for her white face and her drooping shoulders. She was so steady, so occupied with her own small concerns, so--if the truth must be told--dull; he did not think her capable of any grand passion or deep sorrow. It was not easy, he was certain, for her to bear her trouble under her mother's eye. But she would get over it, she was young. It might make it harder for her if he talked to her about it. All day he hung about the house. Mrs. Scott was packing her trunks, but he was afraid that some one might come in. He was not yet quite as free as he thought. To-morrow she would be gone and he could breathe for a little while in peace. Then his sensitive soul reproached him. When at dark, Dr. Lister came to tell him that Mrs. Lister had consented to the publication of Basil's work, and he went to tell Mrs. Scott, she smiled from one corner of her mouth. "Did you suppose she wouldn't consent?" said she. CHAPTER XXIV A DEEPENING SHADOW As the days passed the friendly relations between Mrs. Bent and her daughter were not restored. Mrs. Bent looked at Eleanor furtively, cried when she was away from her, and redoubled all her self-sacrificing toil. The sound of a step on the porch made her shiver. She spoke to Eleanor and Eleanor spoke to her as though there were an ever-present danger of another breaking-through of the thin crust which masked a crater of seething emotion. Mrs. Bent need not have feared that her daughter would open the subject which had led to so unpleasant a scene. No one who had the run of Dr. Green's library could fail to know that there were other forms of existence beside the conventional unions of Waltonville's married folk and Eleanor had, with youth's eagerness to learn the ways of a wider world, followed the lives of a few historical examples of other sorts of union. She had believed herself to be in this matter, as in others, broad-minded. But now her opinions had changed; a fearful possibility threatened her. She came to believe that her mother waited an opportunity to confide in her a secret no longer to be hidden and grown too heavy to bear alone. In her fright she avoided her mother, and when they were together interrupted with some foolishness each sentence which promised to be serious.