If she had been of the true bigot stuff she would have seen in the threatened scandal a means of freeing Mary from an undesirable attachment. But just as in her married life, her heart had not been able to stand against her husband while her mind condemned him, so now. While in theory, and toward people with whom she never came in contact, she had grown even more bitter and intransigent since Robert's death than she had been in her youth, she had all the time been living the daily life of service and compassion which--unknown to herself--had been the real saving and determining force. Impulses of love, impulses of sacrifice toward the miserable, the vile, and the helpless--day by day she had felt them, day by day she had obeyed them. And thus all the arteries, so to speak, of the spiritual life had remained soft and pliant--that life itself in her was still young. It was there in truth that her Christianity lay; while she imagined it to lie in the assent to certain historical and dogmatic statements. And so strong was this inward and vital faith--so strengthened in fact by mere living--that when she was faced with this second crisis in her life, brought actually to close grips with it, that faith, against all that might have been expected, carried her through the difficult place with even greater sureness than at first. She suffered indeed. It seemed to her all through that she was endangering Mary, and condoning a betrayal of her Lord. And yet she could not act upon this belief. She must needs act--with pain often, and yet with mysterious moments of certainty and joy, on quite another faith, the faith which has expressed itself in the perennial cry of Christianity: "Little children, love one another!" And therein lay the difference between her and Barron. It was therefore in this mixed--and yet single--mood that she came back to Meynell, and asked him--quietly--the strange question: "What shall I do--what do you wish me to do or say--with regard to my daughter?" Meynell could not for a moment believe that he had heard aright. He stared at her in bewilderment, at first pale, and then in a sudden heat and vivacity of colour. "I--I hardly understand you, Mrs. Elsmere." They stood facing each other in silence. "Surely we need not inform her," he said, at last, in a low voice. "Only that a wicked and untrue story has been circulated--that you cannot, for good reasons, involving other persons, prosecute those responsible for it in the usual way. And if she comes across any signs of it, or its effects, she is to trust your wisdom in dealing with it--and not to be troubled--is not that what you would like me to say?" "That is indeed what I should like you to say." He raised his eyes to her gravely. "Or--will you say it yourself?" He started. "Mrs. Elsmere!"--he spoke with quick emotion--"You are wonderfully good to me." He scanned her with an unsteady face--then made an agitated step toward her. "It almost makes me think--you permit me--"