"If you knew how I have suffered!" said Chelda, with agitation. "How I have suffered!" A quick gleam sprang to his eyes. Had she repented? If so, though he was very angry, he might possibly forgive. She retreated from him, and drawing up her slender figure against the dark panelling of the wall, hastily ejaculated a few sentences divided between him and her mildly observing aunt. "I did not think when I began--I only sought my own gratification. Then--then it was too late. The agonies of fear, of apprehension, of mortification, that I have undergone, I cannot describe. If you knew, you would not scorn but pity me. I have had no sleep--my food is like ashes. You think you suffer," and she bestowed a glance of mingled fear and aversion on the man, "you know nothing of it,--a little wounded vanity, that is all. I cannot describe what I endure--I cannot describe it," and she buried her face in her hands. "Such days of misery--such nights of pain!" Her agitation was intense--almost too intense for the occasion. Captain Veevers looked at Miss Gastonguay, around whose lips a curious tremor was stealing. There was something tragic and overwrought in her niece's despair,--almost as if she were speaking of one thing and thinking of another. Miss Gastonguay waved him to depart. With a last glance at Chelda, he obeyed her. That woman's sentiment was dead and buried. She only felt remorse. She had flirted with the clergyman; she had been playing with him. Both had found her out. His heart felt lighter. She was too much like a woman with a past. Possibly he had been favoured in being delivered from her. "Chelda," said Miss Gastonguay, softly, "have you anything to tell me?" "No, no," said her niece, in an unhappy, terrified voice, "nothing, nothing. I have behaved badly to Captain Veevers,--I am ashamed." "I am going to take a walk in the wood," said Miss Gastonguay, in the same grave, kind way. "Possibly when I come back you will talk freely to me." "Talk freely--" stammered her niece, raising her head, but her aunt was already gone. She hurried to the window. "Oh, if I dared--if I dared! She might forgive me. She is so changed now, but I cannot, I cannot," and hiding her face in the back of a chair she writhed in an agony of doubt and contrition. "If I were a child or a girl, but I am a woman. I should have known better. If I had only thought--if I had only thought!" Miss Gastonguay went first to the cemetery. The newly made grave could not be seen. Every morning, long before the household was astir, Chelda left her bed, and her aunt sometimes secretly watched her as she went toiling from grave to greenhouse, her delicate hands bearing unaccustomed burdens. This grave was her special charge, the one spot at French Cross to be tenderly cared for and unceasingly beautified, and she ruthlessly stripped the most costly exotics and most precious of house flowers of blossom and leaf.