If further proof were needed, I had it. For straight before my eyes, close to the name of "Arthur Lenox," lay one small yellowish rose-petal, pink-edged. I was well aware from what rose that petal came. Only half-an-hour earlier I had seen Maggie fasten it in Miss Millington's dress, with an apology for its too full-grown condition. The petal must have fluttered down, unseen, at the last moment, as she shut the book, startled by my quick return. My first feeling was as if I had been stunned by a blow. I could not understand what had happened,—could not let myself face it. How long I sat, gazing in stupefaction at the last unfinished sentence of my journal, I do not know. It must have been quite mechanically that I at last added a few words, found further writing impossible, shut and locked the book, and glanced at Elfie. Asleep still! I could not see her face in the new position she had assumed,—a crumpled-up attitude peculiar to herself; but her extreme stillness convinced me that there was no fear of an awakening at present. She might be left for a short time. I took the journal, and went upstairs to my own room. There the storm broke,—not outwardly, much of it. But all at once I realised what this deed was which Miss Millington had done to me. She had covertly possessed herself of my heart's secret,—had stolen from me my most guarded possession. The agony of having the thing known at all—worst of all known by her!—came upon me fiercely; and then the contemptibleness of her conduct! The miserable paltry curiosity! The shameless lack of honour!—Then again my own helplessness! I could do nothing. How much or how little she had read or understood, I might never know. I could not even prove that she had really looked: and if I could, what use? Nothing could undo that which she had done. I would never stoop to accuse her of it,—would never put myself further in her power, by letting her know that I had discovered her act. I would only despise and hate her thenceforward, as a creature utterly base and low, beneath contempt, outside the pale of common respect. Forgive her! Love her! Never! I have always known that I "had a temper," as the saying is,—a temper capable of being roused on occasions, though not susceptible to very small daily worries. But never till yesterday have I felt myself powerless in its grasp, carried away like a leaf in the gale. The half-hour that I spent alone in my room might have been hours, judged by what I went through in the course of it.