She had put away his name from her lips, and had concluded him unworthy. She avoided talking of him even when Winifred began tentatively to approach the subject. “My darling, don’t let us speak of him,” she had said. “I have not command of myself: I might say things which I should be sorry for afterwards.” “But why should he have changed so?” Winifred said; “what reason was there? He was always kind and true.” “I don’t know about true, Winnie.” Then Winifred faltered a little, remembering how he had advised her to humour her father. She made a little pause of reflection, and then abandoned the subject for the moment; but only to return to it a hundred and a hundred times. She was not one of those that prolong a misunderstanding through a lifetime. She pondered and pondered, and it was her instinct to think herself in the wrong. She had been hasty, she had been self-absorbed. And had he not a right to be offended when she so distinctly, of her own will, by no one’s suggestion, put him aside from her counsels, and let him know that she must deal with her brothers alone? It made her shiver to think what a thing it was she had thus done. She would have done it again, it was a necessity of the position in which she found herself. But yet when you reflect, to put your betrothed husband away from you in a great crisis of fate, to reject his aid, to bid him--for it was as good as bidding him--leave her to arrange matters in her own way, what an outrage was that! She could not think how she could have done it, and yet she would have done it over again. To get Miss Farrell to see this was difficult, but she succeeded at last; and then they both trembled and grew pale together to think of what had been done. Poor Edward! and all those days when Winifred had sat miserable in her room, feeling that her last hope and prop had failed her, and that she was left alone in the world, what had he been thinking on his side? That she had thrown him off, that she would have none of him? In their consultations these ladies made great use of the man’s wounded pride. They allowed to each other that it was the wrong of all others which he would be least likely to bear. It was not only a wrong, it was an insult. How could they ever have thought otherwise? It was he who was forsaken, and that without a word, without a reason given.