She could not write that she had kept her word on the next day either, nor during the two days that followed. The just thing to them both would have been to write him exactly what had happened, but as she was a woman, the thing natural to her when she was to blame was to behave worse still by not writing at all. A feeble attempt she made, but ... what was there to say, excepting that she had failed? In every moment she was conscious of his waiting; she realised the glances that he cast at that letter-rack over the console table, and saw his mouth tighten at every disappointment that it dealt. And she was fond of him. Yet it was beyond her to sustain the effort to confess herself demeaned. * * * * * He telegraphed: "Coming to you by the seven o'clock train to-morrow Friday morning." From her bedroom window, before breakfast, she saw the boy crossing the road with the message, and she darted downstairs and took it from him before the double knock could crash. No one was aware, when the family group made their matins to the study, that in her pocket she had a telegram from a lover. No one surmised, when she served the eggs and bacon, that she was questioning, terrified, how to keep his coming secret. If any of them were in, when the maid said that he was asking for her? She would be tongue-tied. And they--how insulting they'd be to him! It would be awful ... awful, unless she were to prepare them, unless she were to say now that she had heard from him and that they must receive him properly. She knew she wasn't going to say it, but she imagined the sensation if she said it: "Mr. Murray's calling this morning. You've made a mistake--I accepted him." She shivered at the mere notion, at fancying how horror would distort their faces. Just after she had been shamming in that room!... She would make an excuse to go out--she'd meet him at the station. It was going to be very painful--she wished he weren't coming. In love with him though she was, she knew that she wished he weren't coming. And in that moment it was borne upon her that her expectation of marrying him had died days ago. She could never go through with it! She would have to tell him so--and he wouldn't understand, wouldn't make allowances for her. He had not understood at Harrogate. He'd reproach her, tell her she had treated him badly. And she'd have to sit there, in the waiting-room, trying not to cry, with people looking on....