mysterious
unconscious shifting of the mind had been hidden from Magdalen, who had
felt with anguish that all she had said on that night of the storm had
had no effect on Fay's mind. She had never seen till now a vestige of
an effect. Fay had shrunk from her persistently afterwards, that was
all.

Strong and ardent souls often wonder why an appeal which they know, if
made to themselves, would clinch them forever into a regenerating
repentance is entirely powerless with a different class of mind. But
although an irresistible truth spoken in love will renovate our being,
and will fail absolutely to reach the mind of another, nevertheless the
weaker, vainer nature will sometimes pick out of the uncomfortable
appeal, to which it turns its deaf ear, a few phrases less distressing
to its _amour propre_ than the rest. To these it will listen. Fay had
retained in her mind Magdalen's vivid description of the love her
husband and Michael had borne her. She had often dwelt upon the
remembrance that she had been greatly loved. During the miserable weeks
when she had virtually made up her mind not to speak, that remembrance
had worked within her like leaven, unconsciously softening her towards
her husband, drawing her towards compassion on Michael.

Now that she did speak again she did not reproach them. She who had
blamed them both so bitterly a few short weeks ago blamed them no
longer. Nor did she say anything about the culpable silence of the real
murderer. That mysterious criminal, that scapegoat who had so far
aroused her bitterest animosity had ceased to darken her mind.

Fay had passed unconsciously far beyond the limitations of Magdalen's
anxious prayer on her behalf. The love of Andrea and Michael, tardily
seen, only partially realised, had helped her at last.

The Bishop listened and listened, a little bent forward, his eyes on
the floor, his chin in his hand. Once he made a slight movement when Fay
reached Michael's arrest, but he quickly recovered himself.

The faint voice faltered itself out at last. The story was at an end.
The Duke was dead and Michael was in prison.

"I have kept him there two years," said Fay, and was silent.

How she had raged against the cruelty of her husband's dying words. What
passionate, vindictive tears she had shed at the remembrance of them.
Now, unconsciously, she adopted them herself. She had ceased to resist
them, and the sting had gone clean out of them.

"Two years," said the