Why not speak now?
Oh! my dear, our hearts are close together to-night; and in all your life, you will never have any one who will listen with greater sympathy than I will, or deal more tenderly with your fault, whatever it may have been.

Tell me, dear! Dear!' she whispered after a pause, during which she realised the depth of the girl's emotion by her convulsive struggling to keep herself in check.
All at once the tortured girl seemed to yield herself, and slipped inertly from her grasp till kneeling down she laid her head in the motherly lap and sobbed.

Miss Rowly kept stroking her hair in silence.
Presently the girl looked up, and with a pang the aunt saw that her eyes were dry.

In her pain she said: 'You sob like that, my child, and yet you are not crying; what is it, oh! my dear one?
What is it that hurts you so that you cannot cry ?' And then the bitter sobbing broke out again, but still alas! without tears.

Crouching low, and still enclosing her aunt's waist with her outstretched arms and hiding her head in her breast; she said: 'Oh! Auntie, I have sent Harold away!' 'What, my dear?
What ?' said the old lady astonished.