She held out her hand: Mrs. Fitzhenry took it, pressed it, a half feeling came over her as if she were about to kiss the check of her offending relative, but her heart hardened, she blushed, and muttering a hasty good-bye, she hurried away. She was bewildered, and after walking a few steps, she turned round, and saw again the white dress of Cornelia, as a turn in the path hid her. The grand, the exclusive Lady Lodore--the haughty, fashionable, worldly-heartless wife thus metamorphosed into a tender-hearted mother--suing to her for crumbs of charitable love--and hiding all her boasted advantages in that low-roofed cottage! What could it all mean? Mrs. Fitzhenry walked on. Again she thought, "How odd! I went there, determining to persuade her to go away, and miserable at the thoughts of seeing her only once; and now I have promised to visit her often, and agreed that she shall live here. Have I not done wrong? What would my poor brother say? Yet I could not refuse. Poor thing! how could I refuse, when she said that she had nothing else to live for? Besides, to go away and live alone in Wales--it would be too dreadful; and she thanked me as if she were so grateful. I hope I have not done wrong. "But how strange it is that Henry's widow should have become so poor; she has given up a part of her income to Ethel, but a great deal remains. What can she have done with it? She is mysterious, and there is never any good in mystery. Who knows what she may have to conceal?" Mrs. Elizabeth got in her carriage, and each step of the horses took her farther from the web of enchantment which Cornelia had thrown over her. "She is always strange,"--thus ran her meditations; "and how am I to see her, and no one find it out? and what a story for Longfield, that Lady Lodore should be living in poverty in dame Nixon's cottage. I forgot to tell her that--I forgot to say so many things I meant to say--I don't know why, except that she talked so much, and I did not know how to bring in my objections. But it cannot be right: and Ethel in her long rambles and rides with Miss Derham or Mr. Villiers, will be sure to find her out. I wish I had not seen her--I will write and tell her I have changed my mind, and entreat her to go away." As it occurs to all really good-natured persons, it was very disagreeable to Mrs. Fitzhenry to be angry, and she visited the ill-temper so engendered on the head of poor Cornelia. She disturbed herself by the idea of all the disagreeable things that might happen--of her sister-in-law's positive refusal to go; the very wording which she imagined for her intended letter puzzled and irritated her. She no longer felt the breath of spring as pleasant, but sat back in the chariot, "nursing her wrath to keep it warm." When she reached her home, Ethel's carriage was at her door.