"How dare you blush?" she cried out almost aloud. "Only a year and a fortnight ago kneeling by his coffin--how dare you blush? I scorn you!" She put her hands to her throat, conscious of that nervous rising which some people call a ball in it; then she sat down full in view of herself, and felt as if she should choke. She was so new to the powerful fetters that had hold of her, were dragging her on, frightening her, subduing her. Was she never to do or to be any more what she chose--never to know the rest and sweetness of forgetting even for a little while? Why must she be mastered by a voice that did not care at all whether its cadence and its fall were marked by her or not? Why must she tremble and falter even in her prayer, if a foot came up the aisle that she could not bear to miss, and yet that was treading down, and doomed, if this went on, to tread down all reviving joy, and every springtide flower that was budding in her heart? "No more to be kept back than the rising of the tide"--these were her words--"but, oh, not foreseen as that is, and not to go down any more." She almost raged against herself. How could she have come there--how could she, why had she never considered what might occur? Then she shed a few passionate tears. "Is it really true, Justina Fairbairn's would-be rival? And neither of us has the slightest chance in the world. Oh, oh, if anything--anything that ever was or could be, was able to work a cure, it would be what I have seen twice this week. It would be to watch another woman making a fool of herself to win his favour, and to see him smile and know it. Oh, this is too miserable, far too humiliating. The other day, when he came, I cared so little; to-day I could hardly look him in the face." Then she considered a little longer, and turned impatiently from her image in the glass. "Why, I have known him all my life, and never dreamed of such a thing! But for that rainy Sunday three weeks ago, I never might have done. Oh, this must be a mere fancy. While I talked to him I felt that it ought to be--that it was. Yes, it is." Her eyes wandered over the lawn. She could see the edges of those little gardens. She had looked at them of late more often than was prudent. "Darlings!" she whispered with such a heartsick sigh, "how keenly I loved them for the sake of my little lost treasure, before ever I noticed their beautiful likeness to their father--no, that's a mistake. I say it is--I mean to break away from it. And even if it was none, after the lesson I have had to-day, it must and shall be a mistake for ever." CHAPTER XXV. THAT RAINY SUNDAY. "He hath put the world in their hearts." This is how that had come about which was such a trouble and oppression to Emily. Emily was walking to church on a Sunday morning, just three weeks before John Mortimer's first call upon her.