"O God, forgive me, and help me to be truthful!" prayed the hypocrite when she was alone. The morrow was Sunday, and in the morning they went to church; and after service they walked dismally to the cemetery. At dinner she could scarcely swallow. She felt faint, and her hands trembled when the return to the drawing-room was made. It had to be now! Her sister-in-law was settling herself for a nap. Amy turned listlessly the pages of a book. Mildred, her shallow eyes upturned, and her head slightly sideways, wore an air of pious resignation to some unexpressed calamity. Turning from the window, with a gulp, the coward stammered: "Oh ... after you had gone from Harrogate, Mr. Murray asked me to marry him." The silence seemed to her to last for minutes. "To do _what_?" gasped Amy. "_Well_!" exclaimed Mildred. "It didn't take long to put _him_ in his place, I hope. What impudence!" "He had an impudent look," said Amy. "Some man who was staying at the hydro where you were?" inquired Aunt Harriet. "Fancy! That's the worst of those large places. But I shouldn't let it worry you, my dear. It isn't worth worrying about. Very likely he didn't mean any harm by it. He didn't understand, that's all--didn't know your heart was buried with him who's gone." "Disgusting, _I_ call it," said Mildred. "But Aunt's quite right--we needn't talk about it.... I thought this morning--I don't know if you noticed it--that the saxifrage on the grave had gone rather thin; there was a gap here and there. I think we'd better see the superintendent. It isn't what it ought to be, by any means." She stood struggling to say the rest--she struggled with all the puny will that was within her. And so unfit was she to struggle, that on surrendering, her paramount emotion was relief. She said, "Yes, we'll see him about it, and have some more." She had intended to write to Murray in time for the evening collection. But she could not write that she had kept her word, and she shrank from writing that she had paltered with it. She lay sleepless, crying with mortification. Once a desperate impulse to be done with her compliance then and there, pulled her up, and she thrust on her dressing-gown; but her mind quailed even as she reached the door, and she sank on to the edge of the bed, procrastinating--and then crept back between the sheets.