It was not much after three o'clock when Elizabeth walked slowly upstairs to her room, bearing single-handed her own responsibilities. Now that she was alone and undisturbed, she began to realise how great they were. She sat down on her little bed to think what she was doing--to look back upon the past, and forward into the future--until her head spun round. When she could think no more, she slid down upon her knees and prayed a fervent, wordless prayer--rested her over-weighted soul on the pillars of the universe, which bore up the strange little world in which she was but an infinitesimal atom--and, feeling that there was a strong foundation somewhere, and perhaps even feeling dimly that she had touched her point of contact with it only just now when she touched her true love's lips, she felt less intolerably burdened with the charge of herself. She rose up with her nerves steadied and her brain composed. What was done was done, and it had been done for the best. "We can but do our best, and leave it," he had said; and, thinking of his words, a sense of his robust faith, which she did not call faith, permeated her unsettled mind and comforted her with the feeling that she would have support and strength in him. She could not repent. She could not wish anything to be altered. She loved him and needed him; and he loved and needed her, and had a right to her. Yes, he had a right to her, independently of that fortune which was hers and which she dared not take away from him while he was using it so much better than she could, he was her mate and lord, and she belonged to him. What reason was there against her marrying him? Only one; Mrs. Duff-Scott's reason, which even she had abandoned, apparently--one obligation of duty, which conscience, left to its own delicate sense of good and evil, refused to insist upon as such. And what reason was there against marrying him to-morrow, if he desired it, and by doing which, while they would be made so happy, no one else could be made unhappy? She was unlearned in the social views and customs concerning such matters, and said in her simple heart there was no reason whatever--none, none.