“Needless, all this,” said Ellinor, in a low clear voice. She had flung back her head and stood, white as death, but composed, holding herself as proudly as a queen. “I deny nothing. It would be useless to deny, did I wish it, what Lady Lochore and her friends and Mrs. Nutmeg have seen for themselves.” She paused, then resumed, gaining firmness in voice and manner: “I give you the truth, in so far as I am myself concerned. Judge of me as you will. Barnaby escaped from his room after my father had locked him up, climbed up to my window, where I let him in—” “Barnaby,” exclaimed the parson with a loud burst of relieved laughter. “’Pon my word, a pretty storm in a tea-cup, Maud Lochore!” Lady Lochore grew grey, save for the bloody fingerprint of death upon either cheek. “And was it Barnaby,” she hissed, “whom you covered with your cloak, to hide him from our eyes?” Ellinor flung a glance of a sad, yet lovely self-abnegation upon David before she answered: “No, it was not Barnaby.” For all its melancholy ring of renunciation the word could not have fallen from her lips in a tone of more exquisite sweetness had it been an avowal of love in the ear of the only one who had a right to demand it. The love that makes the willing martyr, as well as the pride that can face ignominy, had enabled her to surmount the failing of her heart over this bitterness. Was she not bound to silence by a thousand shackles of loyalty, of woman’s reticence, of elementary delicacy, of love for him? The sacrifice was for him. He must never know that it was his madness that had wronged her in the world’s eyes. Her hand could not deal this blow to his fastidious honour. _Moreover, had it not been all a dream?_ How did she know that, waking, he could love her as he had loved her in his dream? Nay, his very defence of her, his calmness and freedom from jealousy seemed to her aching heart to argue a mere friendliness incompatible with passion. Thus for herself, too, her pride could endure to stand with tarnished fame before him, but could not stoop to demand the reparation she knew he would so quickly have offered. She went on, steadily ignoring alike the rector’s shocked distress, Lady Lochore’s triumph and Margery’s insolent silence. “After Barnaby had taken refuge with me—some one, a man, entered my room. He did not know what he was doing. And because of that I shall never tell his name.” Lady Lochore quailed before the high soul and generous heart of the woman she was ruining; and quailing, abashed, shamed in her own tempest-tossed desperate nature, hated her but the more.