But Lenora advanced slowly into the room. She was whiter than the ruff at her throat, her black mantle hung round her in heavy folds, but the hood had fallen back from her head, and her golden hair with the yellow light of the lamp falling full upon it looked like a gleaming aureole which made her eyes appear wonderfully dark by contrast and her beauty more ethereal than it had been before. Laurence gazed on her in speechless wonder, but Clémence, full of hatred for the woman whom she believed to be the author of all the misery of the past few days, still pointed to the door, and sternly, relentlessly, in a voice which quivered with the passion of intense hatred, she reiterated her command: "Go!" "They are bringing Mark home," said Lenora quietly; "he is wounded ... perhaps to death ... I could not get to hear ... but when he opens his eyes he will ask for me. I cannot go unless he sends me away." "They are bringing Mark home," assented the mother, "and ’tis I who will tend him. Never shall thy treacherous hand touch my son..." "Mother," broke in Laurence firmly, "she is Mark’s wife and she has saved us all." Clémence gave a loud sob and fell back in her chair. Laurence tried in vain to comfort her. But Lenora waited quietly until the worst of Clémence’s paroxysm of tears had passed away, then she said with the same patience and gentleness: "I know, mevrouw, that from the first I was an intruder in your house. I, too, have oft in the last few miserable days longed in vain that Mark and I had never met. But do you not think, mevrouw, that our destinies are beyond our ken? that God ordains our Fate, and merely chooses His tools where He desires?" "And Satan, too, chooses his tools," murmured Clémence through her tears. "Oh go! go! I beg of you to go," she added with sudden passionate appeal; "cannot you see that the sight of you must be torture to us all?" "Will you let me stay until I have seen Mark?" said Lenora calmly, "and then I will go." "I will not let you see him," protested Clémence with the obstinacy of the weak. "I would not allow a spy like you to come near him ... aye! a spy ... an assassin mayhap ... how do I know that you are not an emissary of our tyrants? how do I know that beneath your cloak you do not hold a dagger?..." Laurence was trying his best to pacify his mother and throwing pathetic looks of appeal to Lenora the while, whilst the girl herself was bravely trying to hold herself in check. But at this last cruel taunt she uttered a cry of pain, like a poor wild creature that has been hurt to death. In a moment she was across the room, down on her knees beside the old woman and holding Clémence’s trembling hands imprisoned in her own.