Him being gone, uncle told us what he had heard in Lewes, and what all folks there believed to be the truth; how young Edgar had carried on, as men may not, with a young married woman, the grocer's wife where he lodged, the end of it being that she drowned herself in a pond near by, leaving as her last word that he was the cause of it; and so he may have been, but not the way my uncle and the folk at Lewes thought, I'll stake my soul. God makes His troubles in dozens; He don't make a new patterned one for every back. I wasn't the only woman who ever loved Edgar Linley without encouragement and without hope, and risked her soul because she was mad with loving him. But when uncle had told us all this with a black look on his face I never had seen before, he said-- 'Girls, I have always been a clean liver, and I have brought you up in the fear of the Lord. I don't want to judge any man, and Lilian is of age and her own mistress. It's not for me to say what she shall or shan't do, but if she marries that scoundrel, she has my curse here and hereafter, and not one penny of my money, if it was to save her from the workhouse.' After that we were sad enough at Whitecroft. But in two days come a letter from Edgar to Lilian; and when she had read it, she looked at me and said, 'O Isabel, whatever shall I do? I never can marry without dear uncle's consent,' and I turned and went from her without a word, because I couldn't bear to see her arguing and considering what to do, when the best thing in the world was to her hand for the taking. All the next week she cried all day and most of the night. Then uncle went to London, my belief being it was to alter his will, so that if Lilian married Edgar, she should feel it in her pocket, anyhow, and he was to stay all night, and the farm servants slept out of the house, and we were without a maid at the time. So Lilian and me were left alone at Whitecroft. Lilian and I didn't sleep in one room now. I had made some excuse to sleep on the other side of the house, because I couldn't bear to wake up of mornings and see her lying there so pretty, looking like a lily in her white nightgown and her fair hair all tumbled about her face. It was more than any woman could have borne to see her lying there, and think that early in the new year it was him that would see her lying like that of a morning. And that night the place seemed very quiet and empty, as if there was more room in it for being unhappy in. When Lilian had taken her candle and gone up to bed, I walked through all the rooms below, as uncle's habit was, to see that all was fast for the night. It was as I set the bolt on the door of the little lean-to shed, where the faggots were kept, that the devil entered into me all in a breath; and I thought of Lilian upstairs in her white bed, and of how the day must come, when he would see how pretty she looked and white, and I said to myself, 'No, it never shall, not if I burn for it too.'