'O mother! If I must go away, do you come also. You cannot be happy here.' 'I cannot leave now. I have bought this house. I hold to what is mine. As to the people and what they say, I heed them not. It frets me only when it hurts you. There is nothing they can say or do that will either lift me up or cast me down. I must bear my woes.' 'Are you really unhappy, mother?' 'I am what I am. Do not concern yourself about me. I have my sorrows and my shame. You are free. What they say falls on me, not on you, and I wish that you should be away from their chatter and their fangs. You have a future, I have none. Me they are welcome to tread and knead into the dirt if only you go unspotted. My life has not been so happy that I care what befalls me in what remains of it. I value it only for you. But your life is just opening like a June rose, and I must shelter it from the wind. Understand me, Winnie, whilst you are here, you are the butt of every girl who is inclined to be spiteful. Where all seek to hurt, you cannot escape without bruises. When you are elsewhere you will make new friends, get into another class, and begin a fresh life that I do not understand, but this is what I have set my heart upon, and this is the ambition that fills me.' Winefred stood up, flew to her mother, and they were locked in each other's embrace, sobbing on each other's shoulder. High as heaven, deep as hell, is mother's love, self-effacing, capable of all self-sacrifice; and infinitely tender, clinging is that of the child to the mother, when that child has neither brother nor sister, nor father, on whom love may be dissipated. Jane Marley was the first to recover herself. 'Dear child,' she said, 'I live but for you――and for that very reason I part with you. I send you away.' 'I will go,' answered Winefred through her tears. Then she departed to her room. Her mother had appointed for her that recently occupied by the captain, but it had been ceiled, renovated, transformed, and turned into a bright and pretty bedroom fit for a girl. She extinguished her candle. She did not undress and go to bed. She sat at the casement. The room was warm. It was above the parlour, in which the fire burned all day. There was no necessity for artificial light, as the moon shone brightly. Sitting at the window, she looked out on the chalk rocks, dazzling white in the moon, then disappearing as a cloud passed over the face of the luminary, but again shortly to flash out again. Winefred looked indeed at these white prongs of rock, but she did not notice them. The bitter expression had faded from her lips. Her brows were no longer knit; her hands were pressed to the temples, for her pulses throbbed painfully. She was alone. But not so solitary as others might be, even as Jack Rattenbury. She had her mother to fly to, to rest upon, to hold in her arms, but he――he――poor lad, had none. She regretted that she had spoken to him with harshness. CHAPTER XXVIII MOST HEARTILY