Aunt _Joyce_ turned away from the bed, and I saw pain and choler strive for a moment in her eyes. Then the choler fell back, and the pain abode. "Poor child! She cannot conceive it." She said nought sterner; and she came and sat in the window alongside of me. "I tell you, Aunt _Joyce_,"--and _Milisent_ sat up again, and let herself down, and came and stood before us--"I tell you, you have ruined my life!" "My maid," Aunt _Joyce_ makes answer, with sore trouble in her voice, "thine elders will fain have thee and thy sisters told a tale the which we have alway kept from you until now. It was better hidden, unless you needed the lesson. But now they think it shall profit thee, and may-be save _Helen_ and _Edith_ from making any like blunder. And--well, I have granted it. Only I stood out for one point--that I myself should be the one to tell it you. Wait till thou hast heard that story, the which I will tell thee to-morrow. And at after thou hast heard it,-- then tell me, _Milly_, whether I cared for thee this morrow, or whether the hand that hath ruined thy life were the hand of _Joyce Morrell_." "Oh, but you were cruel, cruel!" sobbed _Milly_. "I loved him so!" "So did I, _Milisent_," saith Aunt _Joyce_ very softly, "long ere you maids were born. Loved him so fondly, trusted him so wholly, clung to him so faithfully, that mine eyes had to be torn open before I would see the truth--that even now, after all these years, it is like thrusting a dagger into my soul to tell you verily who and what he is. Ay, child, I loved that man in mine early maidenhood, better than ever thou didst or wouldst have done. Dost thou think it was easy to stand up to the face that I had loved, and to play the avenging angel toward his perfidy? If thou dost, thou mayest know much of foolishness and fantasy, but very little of true and real love." _Milisent_ seemed something startled and cowed. Then all suddenly she saith,--"But, Aunt _Joyce_! He told me he were only of four-and-thirty years." Aunt _Joyce_ laughed bitterly. "Wert so poor an innocent as to crede that, _Milly_?" saith she. "He is a year elder than thy father. But I grant, he looks by far younger than he is. And I reckon he 'bated ten years or so of what he looked. He alway looked young," she saith, the softened tone coming back into her voice. "Men with fair hair like his, mostly do, until all at once they break into aged men. And he hath kept him well, with washes and unguents." It was strange to hear how the softness and the bitterness strave together in her voice. I count it were by reason they so strave in her heart. "Wait till to-morrow, _Milly_," saith Aunt _Joyce_, arising. "Thou shalt hear then of my weary walk through the thorns, and judge for thyself if I had done well to leave thee to the like." _Milly_ sobbed again, but methought something more softly.