It was one afternoon at the beginning of December; Mrs. Latch had gone upstairs to lie down. Esther had drawn her chair towards the fire. A broken-down race-horse, his legs bandaged from his knees to his fetlocks, had passed up the yard; he was going for walking exercise on the downs, and when the sound of his hoofs had died away Esther was quite alone. She sat on her wooden chair facing the wide kitchen window. She had advanced one foot on the iron fender; her head leaned back, rested on her hand. She did not think--her mind was lost in vague sensation of William, and it was in this death of active memory that something awoke within her, something that seemed to her like a flutter of wings; her heart seemed to drop from its socket, and she nearly fainted away, but recovering herself she stood by the kitchen table, her arms drawn back and pressed to her sides, a death-like pallor over her face, and drops of sweat on her forehead. The truth was borne in upon her; she realised in a moment part of the awful drama that awaited her, and from which nothing could free her, and which she would have to live through hour by hour. So dreadful did it seem, that she thought her brain must give way. She would have to leave Woodview. Oh, the shame of confession! Mrs. Barfield, who had been so good to her, and who thought so highly of her. Her father would not have her at home; she would be homeless in London. No hope of obtaining a situation.... they would send her away without a character, homeless in London, and every month her position growing more desperate.... A sickly faintness crept up through her. The flesh had come to the relief of the spirit; and she sank upon her chair, almost unconscious, sick, it seemed, to death, and she rose from the chair wiping her forehead slowly with her apron.... She might be mistaken. And she hid her face in her hands, and then, falling on her knees, her arms thrown forward upon the table, she prayed for strength to walk without flinching under any cross that He had thought fit to lay upon her. There was still the hope that she might be mistaken; and this hope lasted for one week, for two, but at the end of the third week it perished, and she abandoned herself in prayer. She prayed for strength to endure with courage what she now knew she must endure, and she prayed for light to guide her in her present decision. Mrs. Barfield, however much she might pity her, could not keep her once she knew the truth, whereas none might know the truth if she did not tell it. She might remain at Woodview earning another quarter's wages; the first she had spent on boots and clothes, the second she had just been paid. If she stayed on for another quarter she would have eight pounds, and with that money, and much less time to keep herself, she might be able to pull through. But would she be able to go undetected for nearly three whole months, until her next wages came due? She must risk it.