Mona laughed through her tears, and, taking his delicate white hand in both her own, she raised it to her lips. "Sir Douglas said nearly the same thing, though he does not know what I am doing; but either of you would have spoilt me a great deal more than I had ever spoilt myself. You were kind enough to ask me to come to you at the time; but I thought then that I had passed my examination, and I did not know you as I do now. I was restless, and wanted to shake off the cobwebs on a walking tour: but when I heard that I had failed all the energy seemed to go out of me." It was some minutes before he spoke. "Tell me about your life at Borrowness. There is a shop, is there not?" "I don't quarrel with the shop," said Mona warmly: "the shop is the redeeming feature. You don't know how it brings me in contact with all sorts of little joys and sorrows. I sometimes think I see the very selves of the women and girls, as neither priest nor Sunday-school teacher does. I have countless opportunities of sympathising, and helping, and planning, and economising--even of educating the tastes of the people the least little bit--and of suggesting other ways of looking at things. And there is another side to the question too. Some of those women teach me a great deal more than I could ever teach them." "And what about your cousin?" Mona hesitated. "I told Lucy that to give even a plain, unvarnished account of my life at Borrowness would be a disloyalty to my cousin, but one can say anything to you. Mr Reynolds, I knew before I went that my cousin was not a gentlewoman, that ours had for two generations been the successful, hers the unsuccessful, branch of my father's family. I knew she lived a simple and narrow life: but how could I tell that my cousin would be vulgar?--that if under any circumstances it was possible to take a mean and sordid view of a person, or an action, or a thing, she would be sure to take that mean and sordid view? I have almost made a vow never to lose my temper, but it is hard--it is all the harder because she is so good! "Now you know the whole story. Pitch into me well. You are the only person who is in a position to do it, so your responsibility is great." He had never taken his eyes from her mobile face while she was speaking. "I have no wish to pitch into you well," he said; "you disarm one at every turn. I need not tell you that your action in the first instance was hasty and childish--perhaps redeemed by just a dash of heroism." Mona lifted her face with quivering lips. "Never mind the heroism," she said, with a rather pathetic smile. "It was hasty and childish."