Then, with a sudden impulse, if by any means she could smooth matters and win a little household peace, "I desire to be a good mistress to you, Phillis; why should you not be a good servant to me?
You love the children; you are to them a most faithful nurse; why can not you believe that I shall be a faithful mother?
Let us turn over a new leaf, and begin again." She held out her hand, and Phillis took it; looked hard in her mistress's face--the kind, friendly face, that was not ashamed to be a friend even to a poor servant; then, with something very like a sob, she turned and ran out of the room.
But when she was gone, Christian sat down exhausted.

With a desperate self-control she had wrenched herself out of Phillis's power, she had saved herself and her husband from the suspicion that it was possible Dr.Grey's wife could receive, or give occasion to receive, a secret letter, a love-letter, from any man; but when the effort was over she broke down.

Convulsive sobs, one after the other, shook her, until she felt as if her very life were departing.

And in the midst of this agony appeared--Miss Gascoigne.
Aunt Henrietta had spent the whole night, except a brief space for sleeping, in thinking over and talking over her duties and her wrongs, the two being mixed up together in inextinguishable confusion.

Almost any subject, after being churned up in such a nature as hers for twelve mortal hours, would at the end look quite different from what it did at first, or what it really was.