she glanced quickly round the room, and
upon a small writing-table at the foot of the bed she saw a number of
sheets of paper lying loose, with a piece of ribbon beside them. They
had evidently been taken out of the writing-table drawer, which was
partially open, and which, as Hermione could see, contained other sheets
of a similar kind. Hermione looked, and then looked away. She passed the
table and reached the door. When she was there she glanced again at
the sheets of paper. They were covered with writing. They drew, they
fascinated her eyes, and she stood still, with her hand resting on the
door-handle. As a rule it would have seemed perfectly natural to her to
read anything that Vere had left lying about, either in her own room or
anywhere else. Until just lately her child had never had, or dreamed of
having any secret from her. Never had Vere received a letter that her
mother had not seen. Secrets simply did not exist between them--secrets,
that is, of the child from the mother.

But it was not so now. And that was why those sheets of paper drew and
held the mother's eyes.

She had, of course, a perfect right to read them. Or had she--she
who had said to Vere, "Keep your secrets"? In those words had she
not deliberately relinquished such a right? She stood there thinking,
recalling those words, debating within herself this question--and surely
with much less than her usual great honesty.

Emile, she was sure, had read the writing upon those sheets of paper.

She did not know exactly why she was certain of this--but she was
certain, absolutely certain. She remembered the long-ago days, when
she had submitted to him similar sheets. What Emile had read surely
she might read. Again that intense and bitter curiosity mingled with
something else, a strange, new jealousy in which it was rooted. She felt
as if Vere, this child whom she had loved and cared for, had done her
a cruel wrong, had barred her out from the life in which she had always
been till now the best loved, the most absolutely trusted dweller. Why
should she not take that which she ought to have been given?

Again she was conscious of that painful, that piteous sensation of one
who is yielding under a strain that has been too prolonged. Something
surely collapsed within her, something of the part of her being that was
moral. She was no longer a free woman in that moment. She was governed.
Or so she felt, perhaps deceiving herself.

She went swiftly a