The poor girl would not answer. She looked appealingly around. Was there no one who could save her from this woman? Where was Bernard? Why was he not at her side, to shield and protect her? The next moment she realised the impossibility of his being there in her bedroom; and again her eyes roved longingly round the limited space. On the morrow no doubt pitying friends, hearing of her trouble, would rally round her: the clergyman’s wife, the doctor’s, the ladies to whose school she used to go, and others, acquaintances more or less intimate. There was not one of them who would not be kinder to her than this woman, who was goading her now beyond endurance. But they were absent--and Mrs. Cameron was so very, very present. "Do you mean to say--do you mean to say--there is anything between you, the daughter of a criminal, who shall yet be brought to justice, if there be any power in the arm of the law, and my son--my stainless, innocent child? Will you answer me?" The room, which was going round and round, in a cloud of darkness crossed by sparks of light, seemed to Doris to assume once more its ordinary appearance, as she came round out of a half-swoon. What to answer, however, she knew not. She could only dimly comprehend the question. Was there anything between her, overwhelmed as she was with disgrace, and Bernard, poor, defrauded, yet honourable in the eyes of all men? Was there anything between them? Yes. There was something between them--there was love. But could she speak of that to a third person, and that third person one so aggressive as Mrs. Cameron? She felt she could not: therefore again she was silent, while the woman poured out on her the wrath which now completely over-mastered her. "You bad girl!" she cried. "Not content with your father’s having ruined my boy by stealing all his money, you are mean enough and wicked enough to deliberately determine to cut away his one remaining chance of rising in the world! ’Pon my word"--all the vulgarity of the woman was coming to the surface--"you would ruin him body and soul, if you could! All for your own ambition, that you, too, may rise in the world; you intend to cling to him as a limpet clings to a rock--and he won’t be able to raise you, not he, poor lad! but you will drag him down into the mire, which will close over his head and then--then perhaps you will be content." She waited for Doris to speak, but still the girl was unable to articulate a word. She was fastening her hat now, and putting the last touches to her veil and gloves; in a moment or two she would be able to escape into the open air, and into the night, now fast coming on. "It is to his chivalry, doubtless, that you are trusting, to his generosity, his love, his charity, his magnanimity. By his virtues you would slay him, that is, I mean, debase him in the eyes of the world--the world we live in," continued the upbraiding voice.