‘If they live—yes. Well, that will make a hole in her income, I can assure you. While, on your part, there is that money—Michael——’ he hesitated, stammered—‘that money that——’ ‘I know,’ said Michael, quietly. ‘What about it?’ ‘Why, I have done well with it. I have always hoped that some day you would not reject it. It is six years ago, and I have made the most of it. It is a good large sum now—larger than if——’ Michael gave a short laugh. ‘I can well believe that.’ ‘And if I am to believe that you have forgiven,’ he added earnestly, ‘you will not refuse any longer to take your share—ay, and as much more as you like—so that you can go to her and fear nothing, even if she loses every penny she has.’ There was a pause. Michael at last said— ‘You must let me think about it. I cannot decide such a thing all in a minute.’ Indeed, he felt that he could not. And he was beginning to feel that six years ago he had been hard—as hard as some pagan or puritan, whose creed relentlessly demands an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. Quite a new feeling came over him with regard to Gilbert, who, it seemed, had worked for him for many years, and patiently bided till circumstances should allow him to offer the fruits of his work. Sweeping condemnations, he reflected, would be comfortable, very comfortable, to the carnal heart of offended man; but reasonable man must confess that scarcely ever are they just. * * * * * The months dragged on. Autumn fled by; winter had passed from off the face of the earth, and disappeared from the skies, but not from the soul and the mind of Ada. Gradually, after a long and terrible illness, her bodily health began to be restored. The death for which she had prayed, and which she had wildly begged Michael to procure for her, had stayed his hand. She was uplifted from the bed of sickness, but arose a changed being, altered and transformed apparently in her very nature. A melancholy, deep, black, and profound as the grave itself, had settled upon her—a melancholy which nothing ever seemed to move or change. She was not mad now, if she could still hardly be called sane, just because of this black cloud which rolled between her and other persons. She had no craze, and no delusion, properly speaking; she was simply dead to hope and joy, to every amelioration of the present, to every hope in the future. Eleanor studied her with awe and wonder, realising the mysterious nature of the human creature in her. For if Ada had lost great things, if she had fallen from a high ideal, had been dashed from a great height of purity and loftiness of soul, and so had felt herself irreparably stained and polluted, her present condition of apathetic despair would have been comprehensible to Eleanor, and she would have sympathised as well as pitied. But the things she had lost, and the loss of which had reduced her to what she was, were so small; at least, they appeared so to the other.