'Shall I fill the bath, Miss? Shall I leave the hot water here, Miss?' 'Bath ... hot water ...' Kitty repeated the words over as if she were striving to grasp a meaning, but which eluded her. Soon after the maid returned with a tray. The trivial jingle of the cups and plates was another suffering added to the ever-increasing stress of mind. Her dress was torn, it was muddy, there were bits of furze sticking to it. She picked these off; and as she did so, accurate remembrance and simple recollection of facts returned to her, and the succession was so complete that the effect was equivalent to a re-enduring of the crime, and with a foreknowledge of it, as if to sharpen its horror and increase the sense of the pollution. The vague hills, the vague sea, the sweet glow of evening--she saw it all again. And as if afraid that her brain, now strained like a body on the rack, would suddenly snap, she threw up her arms, and began to take off her dress, as if she would hush thought in abrupt movements. In a moment she was in stays and petticoat. The delicate and almost girlish arms were disfigured by great bruises. Great black and blue stains were spreading through the skin. Kitty lifted up her arm; she looked at it in surprise; then in horror she rushed to the door where her dressing-gown was hanging, and wrapped herself in it tightly, hid herself in it so that no bit of her flesh could be seen. XIII. The day grew into afternoon. She awoke from a dreamless sleep of about an hour, and, still under its soothing influence, she pinned up her hair, settled the ribbons of her dressing-gown, and went downstairs. She found her father and John in the drawing-room. 'Oh, here is Kitty!' they exclaimed. 'But what is the matter, dear? Why are you not dressed?' said Mr. Hare. 'But what is the matter? ... Are you ill?' said John, and he extended his hand. 'No, no, 'tis nothing,' she replied, and avoiding the outstretched hand with a shudder, she took the seat furthest away from her father and lover. They looked at her in amazement, and she at them in fear and trembling. She was conscious of two very distinct sensations--one the result of reason, the other of madness. She was not ignorant of the causes of each, although she was powerless to repress one in favour of the other. She knew she was looking at and talking to her dear, kind father, and that the young man sitting next him was John Norton, the son of her dear friend, Mrs. Norton; she knew he was the young man who loved her, and whom she was going to marry. At the same time she seemed to see that her father's kind, benign countenance was not a real face, but a mask which he wore over another face, and which, should the mask slip--and she prayed that it might not--would prove as horrible and revolting as---