The ghostly presence of his life came to him. He cried out to her, made appeal to her, in sackcloth and ashes. And then, in some mysterious, heavenly way she was revealed to him afresh; not as an enemy whom he had offended, not as a lover slighted, but as his best and tenderest friend. She closed no gates against the future:--that was for himself to settle, if closed they were to be. She seemed to walk with him, hand in hand, sister with brother--in a deep converse of souls. Chapter XI Gertrude Marvell was sitting alone at the Maumsey breakfast-table, in the pale light of a December day. All around her were letters and newspapers, to which she was giving an attention entirely denied to her meal. She opened them one after another, with a frown or a look of satisfaction, classifying them in heaps as she read, and occasionally remembering her coffee or her toast. The parlourmaid waited on her, but knew very well--and resented the knowledge--that Miss Marvell was scarcely aware of her existence, or her presence in the room. But presently the lady at the table asked-- "Is Miss Blanchflower getting up?" "She will be down directly, Miss." Gertrude's eyebrows rose, unconsciously. She herself was never late for an 8:30 breakfast, and never went to bed till long after midnight. The ways of Delia, who varied between too little sleep and the long nights of fatigue, seemed to her self-indulgent. After her letters had been put aside and the ordinary newspapers, she took up a new number of the _Tocsin_. The first page was entirely given up to an article headed "How LONG?" She read it with care, her delicate mouth tightening a little. She herself had suggested the lines of it a few days before, to the Editor, and her hints had been partially carried out. It gave a scathing account of Sir Wilfrid's course on the suffrage question--of his earlier coquettings with the woman's cause, his defection and "treachery," the bitter and ingenious hostility with which he was now pursuing the Bill before the House of Commons. "An amiable, white-haired nonentity for the rest of the world--who only mention him to marvel that such a man was ever admitted to an English Cabinet--to us he is the 'smiler with the knife,' the assassin of the hopes of women, the reptile in the path. The Bill is weakening every day in the House, and on the night of the second reading it will receive its 'coup de grace' from the hand of Sir Wilfrid Lang. Women of England--_how long_!--" Gertrude pushed the newspaper aside in discontent. Her critical sense was beginning to weary of the shrieking note. And the descent from the "assassin of the hopes of women" to "the reptile in the path" struck her as a silly bathos. Suddenly, a reverie--a waking dream--fell upon her, a visionary succession of sights and sounds. A dying sunset--and a rising wind, sighing through dense trees--old walls--the light from a kitchen window--voices in the distance--the barking of a dog....