She rushed
into a falsehood.
'Desmond knows nothing about it! I don't want him dragged in.'
Elizabeth's eyes, with their bitter, wounded look; seemed to search
the girl's inmost mind. Then she moved away.
'We had better go to bed. We shall both want to think it over.
Good-night.'
And from the darkness of the hall, where fire and lamp were dying,
Pamela half spell-bound, watched the tall figure of Elizabeth slowly
mounting the broad staircase at the further end, the candle-light
flickering on her bright hair, and on a bunch of snowdrops in her
breast.
Then, for an hour, while the house sank into silence, Pamela sat
crouched and shivering by the only log left in the grate. 'A little
while ago,' she was thinking miserably, 'I had good feelings and
ideas--I never hated anybody. I never told lies. I suppose--I shall
get worse and worse.'
And when she had gone wearily to bed, it was to cry herself to
sleep.
The following morning, an urgent telegram from her younger sister
recalled Elizabeth Bremerton to London, where her mother's invalid
condition had suddenly taken a disastrous turn for the worse.
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