She had tried to say to Mrs. Tanner that it was not hard, that somewhere and somehow something of which they had no definite knowledge meant it all for the best; and when the worst of the pain was over she would say it again. But at this particular moment, although she looked so resigned, she could neither say it nor even think it. As the minutes dragged on, and Mrs. Tanner, stopping her flittings around her, suddenly flitted upstairs, she grew more and more sullenly angry and frigidly bitter. It seemed to her not only wrong but absurd that Tibbie should have died, that her beautiful day should have come to an end like this. She had been so sure of the goodness of God, and, while she was most sure, her daughter had lain dead. Her heart had gone up to Him in great chants of praise, and yet He had known that this waited for her on her very hearth. She felt so terribly put to shame that even in the dignity of her trouble she could have hidden her humbled face. Now she blushed for herself, remembering her childlike pleasure in her success. Others, too, she thought, would remember, and make mock of her love, wondering how it had been possible for her not to know.... For the time being even her sorrow was merged in bitter resentment at her own betrayal. Later, standing by Tibbie’s coffin, self and its wrongs would be blotted out; but for the moment she could only remember that her confidence had been put to shame. Mrs. Tanner had opened the back door during one of her many flittings, letting the last of the sun into the little cottage. Dipping through the mist in the garden, it sent a shaft of light slanting across the scullery, a sword of light, as it were, that came to rest just within the kitchen. It was as if the sun, that had come to honour the tenant in the early morning, had still another message for her before going. She had her back to it, however, sitting aching and grieving, full of deep bitterness and hard revolt. The world before her was dark beyond reach of light, even the terrible lightening of a shining sword. She sank presently into a lethargy which was not sleep, but that dark, dreadful place where the soul no longer struggles to keep a hold on hope, but deliberately chooses for itself the eternal contemplation of woe. She sat hunched a little in the now-voiceless chair, her head bent, her eyes dull, her legs stiff on the upturned tub. Her hands, which had now ceased their travellings to and fro, lay as if numb or dead on the lap of the black gown. She looked as if she had had such a severe blow that it had killed even the wish to rise—killed everything, indeed, except the power to refuse to move or to feel again.... Upstairs, Mrs. Tanner’s light feet drew an occasional light creak from the sensitive boards. Mrs. Clapham listened to them without hearing them; and then, suddenly raising her eyes, beheld Emma Catterall standing before her. CHAPTER II