During the next day or two the pity of her servants, the silent, unexpressed pity, was very hard to bear. As each morning came her punishment seemed to become more and more intolerable to her. She could not read. There were none among her friends, not even her mother, to whom she could write. It was still her hope,--her faintest hope, that she need confess to none of them the fact that her husband had quarrelled with her. She could only sit and ponder over the tyranny of the man who by his mere suspicions could subject a woman to so cruel a fate. But on the evening of the third day she was told that a gentleman had called to see her. Mr. Gray sent his card in to her, and she at once recognised Mr. Gray as her husband's attorney. She was sitting at the open window of her own bedroom, looking into the garden, and she was aware that she had been weeping. "I will be down at once," she said to the maid, "if Mr. Gray will wait." "Oh, ma'am, you do take on so dreadfully!" said the girl. "Never mind, Mary. I will come down and see Mr. Gray if you will leave me." "Oh, ma'am, oh, Miss Holt, I have known you so long, may I not say a word to you?" "I am not Miss Holt. I am still entitled to bear my husband's name." Then the girl, feeling herself to have been rebuked, was leaving the room, when her mistress jumped up from her seat, took her in her arms, and kissed her. "Oh, Mary," she said, "I am unhappy, so unhappy! But pray do not tell them. It is true that you have known me long, and I can trust you." Then the girl, crying much more bitterly than her mistress, left the room.