Mrs. Trevanion looked at her with strained eyes that were past tears. “Why,” she said, “why--did you not say so seventeen years ago, Jane?” “Oh, Madam,” cried Jane, seizing her mistress by the hands, “don’t do it another time! They are all so young, they want you. It can’t do them any good, but only harm, if you go away. Oh, Madam, listen to me that loves you. Who have I but you in the world? But don’t leave them. Oh, don’t we both know the misery it brings? You may be doing it thinking it will make up. But God don’t ask these kind of sacrifices,” she cried, the tears running down her cheeks. “_He_ don’t ask it. He says, mind your duty now, whatever’s been done in the past. Don’t try to be making up for it, the Lord says, Madam; but just do your duty now; it’s all that we can do.” Mrs. Trevanion listened to this address, which was made with streaming eyes and a face quivering with emotion, in silence. She kept her eyes fixed on Jane’s face as if the sight of the tears was a refreshment to her parched soul. Her own eyes were dry, with that smile in them which answers at some moments in place of weeping. “You cut me to the heart,” she said, “every word. Oh, but I am not offering God any vain sacrifices, thinking to atone. He has taken it into his own hand. Life repeats itself, though we never think so. What I did once for my own will God makes me do over again not of my own will. He has his meaning clear through all, but I don’t know what it is, I cannot fathom it.” She said this quickly, with the settled quietness of despair. Then, the lines of her countenance melting, her eyes lit up with a forlorn entreaty, as she touched Jane on the shoulder, and asked, “Are you coming? You will not let me go alone--” “Oh, Madam, wherever you go--wherever you go! I have never done anything but follow you. I can neither live nor die without you,” Jane answered, hurriedly; and then, turning away, tied on her bonnet with trembling hands. Madam had done everything else; she had left nothing for Jane to provide. They went out together, no longer alarmed to be seen--two dark figures, hurrying down the great stairs. But the languor that follows excitement had got into the house: there were no watchers about; the whole place seemed deserted. She, who that morning had been the mistress of Highcourt, went out of the home of so many years without a soul to mark her going or bid her good-speed. But the anguish of the parting was far too great to leave room for any thought of the details. They stepped out into the night, into the dark, to the sobbing of the wind and the wildly blowing trees. The storm outside gave them a little relief from that which was within.