They seated her in an easy chair. As the colour was creeping back to her face and lips, Catherine drew Margaret Van Eyck aside. "Is she staying with you, if you please?" "No, madam." "I wouldn't let her go back to Sevenbergen to-night, then." "That is as she pleases. She still refuses to bide the night." "Ay, but you are older than she is; you can make her. There, she is beginning to notice." Catherine then put her mouth to Margaret Van Eyck's ear for half a moment; it did not seem time enough to whisper a word, far less a sentence. But on some topics females can flash communication to female like lightning, or thought itself. The old lady started, and whispered back. "It's false! it is a calumny! it is monstrous! Look at her face. It is blasphemy to accuse such a face." "Tut! tut! tut!" said the other, "you might as well say this is not my hand. I ought to know; and I tell ye it is _so_." Then much to Margaret Van Eyck's surprise she went up to the girl, and, taking her round the neck, kissed her warmly. "I suffered for Gerard, and you shed your blood for him I do hear: his own words show me I have been to blame, the very words you have read to me. Ay, Gerard, my child, I have held aloof from her. But I'll make it up to her, once I begin. You are my daughter from this hour." Another warm embrace sealed this hasty compact, and the woman of impulse was gone. Margaret lay back in her chair, and a feeble smile stole over her face. Gerard's mother had kissed her and called her daughter; but the next moment she saw her old friend looking at her with a vexed air. "I wonder you let that woman kiss you." "His mother!" murmured Margaret, half reproachfully. "Mother, or no mother, you would not let her touch you if you knew what she whispered in my ear about you." "About me?" said Margaret, faintly. "Ay, about you whom she never saw till to-night." The old lady was proceeding, with some hesitation and choice of language, to make Margaret share her indignation, when an unlooked-for interruption closed her lips. The young woman slid from her chair to her knees, and began to pray piteously to her for pardon. From the words and the manner of her penitence a bystander would have gathered she had inflicted some cruel wrong, some intolerable insult, upon her venerable friend. CHAPTER XLVI THE little party at the hosier's house sat at table discussing the recent event, when their mother returned, and, casting a piercing glance all round the little circle, laid the letter flat on the table. She repeated every word of it by memory, following the lines with her finger, to cheat herself and hearers into the notion that she could read the words or nearly. Then, suddenly lifting her head, she cast another keen look on Cornelis and Sybrandt: their eyes fell. On this the storm that had long been brewing burst on their heads.