Poor Innocent! Safety and shelter, and the life of order and peace which suited her half-developed faculties, lay calm and sunshiny on one side. On the other was conflict, confused darkness and misery, pain and shame, gathering in heavy clouds to swallow her up. For one moment it hung on the balance which her fate was to be; terrible moment, which we, none of us, divine, during which we have to exercise that great and awful choice which is the privilege of humanity, in blindness and unconsciousness, ignorant of the issues, stupid to the importance of the decision. This was decided, however, not by Innocent. Impatient Frederick seized her hand and drew it through his arm. “This is folly,” he cried. “What you, Innocent! you be such a little traitor and resist me and get me into trouble? No, no, come along. This is out of the question now.” Next moment he had knocked at his father-in-law’s door. The Villa looked very much as it had done the day that Frederick first made his appearance there. The sun was still shining by intervals, but glimmers of firelight came from the window, and the garden behind was spare of flowers. Mr. Batty met them as they came in, and stared hard at the girl whom Frederick led by the hand into the narrow light passage which traversed the house from the street to the garden door. “This is my cousin, sir, Miss Innocent Vane,” said Frederick. “I have brought her to see Amanda. She is on a visit at the High Lodge, as you may have heard.” “Oh, yes, I’ve heard,” said Batty, “and I think it’s time she should turn up, the only one of your family as has ever come near my girl. You’re welcome, my dear, better late than never; though I think, considering how kind the Eastwoods have been to you, that you might have come a little sooner to show Mrs. Frederick some respect.” Innocent listened, wondering, to this address, gazing at the man whom she had a confused recollection of having seen before. All that she comprehended now was, more or less, that he was scolding her, though about what she could not tell. He was a kind of man totally unknown to Innocent--his thick figure, his coarse air, his loud voice and red hands, surprised, without so much revolting her as they might have done, had her organization been more perfect. She was frightened, but made an effort of politeness to conceal it. “Is she better?” she asked, not knowing what to say. “You’ll see what she’ll say to you when she sees you,” said Batty to Frederick with a chuckle, “and I don’t blame her, poor girl. If this is what you call visiting your wife when she’s poorly, things have changed since my day. It’s close on five, and nearly time for dinner, and you’ve been out since the moment you swallowed your lunch.”