After the briefest interview with her mother, Adela escaped to the chamber assigned her; the one she used to occupy. This left Sir Sandy free to open the budget his wife had charged him with, and to say that for the present he and Harriet would rather not continue to have the responsibility of Adela. Lady Acorn, as she listened, audibly wished Adela was a child again, that she might "have the nonsense shaken out of her." Lady Sarah Hope raised her condemnatory shoulders, as her mother related this. She had never had the slightest sympathy with the trouble Adela had brought upon herself, or with the remorse it entailed. "Will you see her, Sarah?" asked Lady Acorn. "No; I would rather not. At least, not today. I must be going shortly." Poor Adela! True, she had been guilty of grievous offences, but they had brought their punishment. As we sow, so do we generally reap. This return to her mother's home seemed to bring back all the past sin, all the present anguish, in colours tenfold more vivid. Kneeling on the floor in the bedroom, her hands clasped round Grace's knees as she sat, Adela sobbed out her repentance, her hopeless longings for the life and the husband she had thrown away. "Poor child!" sighed Grace, her own tears falling as she stroked with a gentle hand her unhappy sister's hair, "your sorrow is, I see, hard to bear. If I only knew how to comfort you!" No answer. "Still, Adela, although he is yet, in one sense of the word, your husband, it is not well for you to indulge these thoughts; these regrets. Were there even the most distant hope that things between you would alter, it would be different; but I fear there is none." "I know it," bewailed Adela. "What he did, he did for ever." "Then you should no longer, for your own peace' sake, dwell upon his memory. Try and forget him. It seems curious advice, Adela, but I have none better to give." "I cannot forget him. My dreams by night, my thoughts by day, are of him, of him alone. If I could only be with him for just one week of reconciliation, to show him how I would, if possible, atone to him, to let him see that my repentance is lasting, though he put me away again at the week's end, it would be something. Oh, Grace, you don't know what my remorse is--how hard a cross I have to bear." She knelt there in her bitter distress. Not much less distressing was it to Grace. By dint of coaxing, Adela was at length partially calmed, and lay back, half-exhausted, in an easy-chair. At lunch-time, for this had occurred in the morning, she refused to go down, or to take anything. In the afternoon, when Grace was back again, Darvy brought up a cup of chocolate and some toast. Whilst languidly taking this, Adela abruptly renewed the subject: the only one, as she truly said, that ever occupied her mind. "Do you see him often, Grace?" "Rather often," replied Grace, knowing that the question must refer to Sir Francis. "He is friendly with you, then?"