“Yes, I think they do,” replied Slaney, staring before her into the blue and pink and yellow flames of the wood fire. Then, after a pause, “I am not quite sure that I don’t sympathize with them.” “Sympathize with what?” asked Glasgow impatiently. “With their distress, or with their superstition?” “Perhaps a little of both.” At his tone her fastidious upper lip had set itself again into an unsympathetic line; her forehead seemed as white and quiet as the moonlight behind her. “Very well,” said Glasgow, provoked and scornful, yet beyond all things attracted, “I take all consequences. I appropriate all the ill-luck. Now will you sympathize with _me_?” “Oh, don’t!” she exclaimed, putting out her hand with a horrified gesture, as if what he had said would be instantly overheard. “Will you?” he repeated, deliciously perceptive of her fear, and before he realized what he was doing he had kissed the fastidious, spiritual mouth, and found it a trembling and human one. “You can learn twelve of the ‘I wills’ of the Psalms for next Sunday, Tierney,” said Uncle Charles’ voice in the hall, “and three more of the ‘Plain Reasons against joining the Church of Rome.’” Uncle Charles opened the drawing-room door as he made the concluding charge, and met Mr. Glasgow in the act of taking leave of his niece. When Slaney went up to her room that night she sat for a long time by the fire, with her elbows on her knees and her face in her hands. There was a little table by her. On it were an old-fashioned desk, a good many books, and, half-emerging from the paper in which it had been wrapped, a number of the _Fortnightly Review_. She sat for a long time, and sometimes in the silence of the house the beating of her heart was like a voice in her ears, telling her irrepressibly of her own weakness and strength, of depths of herself hitherto unknown. Her pure and ardent nature was awakening out of narrowness, her clear intellect scaled all possibilities like a strong climber. As if she had yielded to herself for too long, she sat up at length, and after a moment, took up the _Fortnightly Review_, and began to turn its pages over--Glasgow had brought it to her that afternoon--and she searched for the article that he had commended. Cold logic and relentless statistics would inflict composure, would steady her down to the level of sleep. Two of the pages fell apart where a sheet of paper had been thrust in; she was abruptly confronted by a letter in a large, heavy handwriting. The eye is quicker than the will. Before she snatched her eyes away she had taken in its half-a-dozen lines. For some moments she sat perfectly still, while the blood came with a rush to her cheeks and forehead. Then she crumpled up the letter and threw it into the fire. CHAPTER V